The Spirit Lens

by Carol Berg

  It was not love that made me believe. Though it might have grown to that, we scarce knew each other. We had spent perhaps six full hours in each other’s company—both of us bound in secrets. Since that last cold kiss, my dreams of her were already altered. Her soft, self-contained beauty had become that of an indelible artwork, not a living, breathing woman. I wished her safe and happy, but the ache of not knowing where she was—and maybe never knowing—had quickly become manageable. Someday I might discover that I had been duped. Until then, I would rejoice in her freedom and believe.

  Having tied up the documents and gathered my materials, I returned to the palace, waiting in an anteroom as the transcript was signed by Philippe and the Magisterial Advisors, sealed by Philippe’s ring, and installed in the judicial archives. An attendant was dispatched to summon the family representatives to hear the verdict read. By morning, heralds would be spreading news of it throughout the kingdom.

  Shortly after the arrival of the Camarilla advocate, two masked inquisitors, and four adepts, Anne de Vernase arrived. I rose when she entered the waiting room, bowed, and exposed my hand. She returned neither the greeting nor the gesture, but rather faced the judiciary chamber door with hands knotted in front of her. Great gods, what cruel mother sends a seventeen-year-old child alone to hear her father condemned?

  The girl’s flighty curls were already escaping the tight braid she’d worn for the trial. She appeared altogether small and pinched, as well she might. No matter what secrets she yet held, I felt sorry for her.

  “Damoselle,” I said quietly, when the attendant stepped out, “though I understand your distraction, I would advise you to maintain protocol while you are here.”

  Her brow wrinkled, and she flicked a glance at me as if my meaning might be written on my face. I waved the marked back of my hand at her. “It is the law. I don’t mind one way or another, but others might. Especially today.”

  With a shaking breath, she set her lips tight, returned her gaze to the door, and exposed her hand on her shoulder. She was trembling.

  “Perhaps we should send for your mother.” Out of all the verbiage I had directed at her that day, it surprised me that this suggestion broke her composure, evoking a spearing glance of hatred and contempt.

  The door to the judicial chamber burst open, and the masked inquisitors came out, followed by the two sorcerers, shackled and shrouded in dark wool sewn with iron rings. An attendant held open the outer door.

  “Damoselle de Vernase,” said one of the Magisterial Advisors, poking his head from the inner chamber, “enter.”

  But the girl stood paralyzed, her face devoid of color, her eyes like copper medallions fixed in horror on the bullish Fedrigo—unrecognizable in his shapeless hood and gown. Holy angels, her father was reportedly a big man, like the adept.

  “Creator forgive you, Fedrigo,” I said, stepping close to the hooded giant. “No other can.”

  He growled and rattled his chains. The adepts shoved him forward.

  The second, smaller prisoner stepped out of line, stumbling in his shackles. “Good, kind Duplais,” Orviene babbled, “tell them I’m no good at magic! My father bribed the examiner at Seravain. I swear to every god and saint, I know nothing of spelled books . . . nothing of leeching . . . I didn’t see their evils, their depravity. Please, do you know what’s done to you in the Bastionne? Help me. Tell them. . . .”

  The masked inquisitors wrenched him into line and shoved him through the door. I felt ill.

  “Damoselle, present yourself.” The summoning advisor waved at the attendant holding the door. “Mardullo, have the boy brought right away. This’ll not take long.”

  Anne swallowed hard and followed the impatient advisor into the judiciary chamber.

  For a quarter hour, I sat with throbbing head in my hands, trying to remember why I had ever taken on this investigation. Just as an advisor opened the door of the judiciary chamber, two members of the Guard Royale escorted young Ambrose into the waiting room . “Good,” said the advisor. “Bring him in. And you are required, as well, Sonjeur de Duplais.”

  In the front of the square, somber room, Philippe, his seven advisors, and his judicial scribe sat at the same long, polished table they had occupied the entire day, the empty witness’s chair facing them on the right, the four empty prisoners’ chairs facing them on their left. The few rows of chairs reserved for observers remained empty, save for one on the first row where Anne de Vernase sat alone.

  The guards installed Ambrose beside her. The youth, casting hostile glances about the room, gripped the arm of his sister’s chair and bent his head her way. “So he did it, did he? Judged him guilty? Isn’t it a relief we’ve a kindly guardian to care for us?” At least the lad did not bellow as he had on the night of the Exposition. Standing just behind them, I was likely the only person in the room who heard.

  “Quiet your tongue,” said the girl, intensely still, eyes fixed on her folded hands. “You must think, now. For your family. For your life.”

  Lord Baldwin motioned me to the witness chair. He served as examiner this time. “Sonjeur de Duplais, please recount your knowledge of the traitor Michel de Vernase’s son.”

  As the boy sneered and rolled his eyes, I gave an accurate rendition of what I had seen at Montclaire and at Castelle Escalon. I did not report his insolence word for word, but no one in the room could fail to imagine what insult and exuberant expressions of anger and resentment meant. This judgment was quick:

  “Ambrose de Vernase to be declared a Danger to the Crown and a Risk of collusion with a known Traitor, to be held in Spindle Prison until the Traitor Michel de Vernase is apprehended or until the King of Sabria determines he is no longer a Danger and a Risk, according to the Law of Sabria.”

  The judicial scribe passed me the document to review and sign. I wished I could argue that the judgment was harsh or unfair. But no sovereign with a mind would leave Ambrose free to carry tales to his father, to join him, or to be used as a pawn in Michel’s cause by anyone else. House arrest would have been more generous, but at fifteen, Ambrose was clever and well trained. He had already eluded soft guardianship. And once word got out as to his father’s crimes, Ambrose might not be safe outside the Spindle.

  “I won’t!” said the boy, reaching for his sister. All traces of youthful defiance fled. “Ani, tell them. I don’t know anything!”

  Michel de Vernase’s children, faces pale and rigid with shock, were forced apart, one to be returned to her mother, the other remanded into custody of soldiers who bound his hands and would row him through three iron water gates into a dank and lonely prison. If the conte himself had been in that room, I would have snatched a guard’s dagger and shoved it through the blackguard’s heart. No matter their secrets and conspiracy, Michel had made these two and put them here. He was responsible.

  I assumed this was the end of the day’s ordeal. But as Philippe thanked and dismissed his advisors and scribe, he commanded me to stay behind.

  The cold sweat that popped out under my layered garments had naught to do with the stuffy judicial chamber. Surely my cousin would have kept his advisors behind if he planned to enter another charge to the day’s tally. I stood beside the witness box I had so recently left.

  Philippe rose, removed his purple robe, and dropped his heavy pectoral chain and diadem onto the table amid the papers, ink bottles, bloody implements, and damning letters. He mopped his damp forehead, stretched his back and shoulders, then moved to the end of the long table where a decanter held enough wine to fill one cup. He lifted the vessel in query. “You’ve expended more words today than the rest of us together.”

  “Thank you, sire, but no. I’ve not the vigor to lift a cup just now.”

  He refilled his own and sat in one of the advisors’ chairs, beckoning me to take a seat across the table from him. Instead of drinking, he set the cup on the table, fingering its stem and the embossed tree on its bowl. “My wife seems well recovered from her ordeal.”


  “I am gratified to hear that, lord.” That he began with this did naught for my simmering nerves.

  “She set Maura free, you know. Pretended a fainting fit. While the warder escorted one of her ladies to fetch smelling salts from the boat, she used a spelled ring to unlock Maura’s cell. And what guards could keep count of a bevy of queen’s ladies dressed in identical black, hooded cloaks on a night when fireworks lit the sky? It is much easier to manipulate your warder when you are the reinstated queen with full honors, rather than a prisoner awaiting release.”

  Exactly so. I smiled inside, even as my neck shrank with the imagined slide of cold steel.

  “I understand why she did it. I forced her to find a place to take her stand. Putting her in the Spindle . . . one of her nature, so fragile in heart. No necessity—none—has pained me so. Payment must be made for such an insult, and this is mine. Indeed, when it comes to it, I am grateful to pay. But damned be this rift that must now persist”—his fist slammed the table so hard, the advisors’ empty cups rattled and his own near toppled—“damned be these corrupted mages and the villain who used them, and damned be this office that must shape our privacy. The whispers about her will never be silenced.”

  Astonished at such a personal confessional, I trod carefully. “Your lady queen may be fragile of heart, lord, but she is a woman of extraordinary strength and conviction. I did not understand that before observing her close to. Perhaps, with your generous reception and public engagement, others will see those qualities, as well.”

  My cousin’s finger dabbed at droplets of wine jarred out of the cup by his outburst. Then he dropped Dante’s spelled ring on the table beside his cup. As it spun and settled, he raised his eyes, every bit a king’s finest instrument, to meet mine. My body demanded to crawl under the table.

  “It is well you told me from the beginning that you were a failed sorcerer, Portier, else I’d have to think you conspired with my wife to free the young lady. I apologize for that.”

  I wondered if vomiting would be excessively dramatic at this point. Philippe made no sign that he noticed how near it I was.

  “You’ve done me great service, cousin, no matter that I detest the truth you’ve uncovered. It was a difficult task I set you. But your conduct has been exemplary, and you’ve shown extraordinary intelligence and insight, as Michel himself told me a lifetime ago that you could. I wish you to take a permanent position in my household and continue to sort out such complicated matters. Only a fool would believe the Aspirant has abandoned his ambitions just because we know his name and have lopped off his magical arms.”

  He sipped his wine.

  “You may name the office as you like—aide, special counselor, royal investigator. Agente confide is no longer applicable, as my greatest enemy knows you work for me. But I will make clear to all that my earlier public assessments of your character, intellect, and motives were but a screen. Or”—he toyed with Dante’s ring, then shoved it in my direction—“less comfortable, but perhaps more useful, we could leave such unjust assessments as they are and install you in some minor post, allowing you to remain . . . underestimated.”

  I was entirely wrung out, and if he intended that as punishment, it was a clever one. “Sire, you are most generous, and I am so very honored, but . . .”

  For my life, I could not have explained why I did not grasp a royal appointment with both hands and crow to the powers of Heaven that now I would have leisure, means, and opportunity to find my way in the world. The art I had just reclaimed could not be practiced in the mouldering halls of Seravain, and I had no desire to live in a forest hovel as Dante had.

  “In no wise can I make such a decision tonight.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’ve had few days so difficult as this. Take a little time.” He tapped a fingernail idly on the table. “Have you heard that my wife plans to retain this other mage—your Dante?”

  “No, lord.” This news stung like a slap from an icy hand. Dante and I were finished here. The household acolytes and adepts had been advised by the Camarilla to return to Seravain.

  “I don’t like him.”

  “He did you good service, lord. Without him we’d never have unraveled the deception of the arrow, Gaetana’s interests, or the meaning of the spyglass or Eltevire.”

  “But tell me, cousin, what he did five nights ago—tell me it was cleaner, healthier than the spyglass magic.”

  And, of course, I could not. Philippe would not reveal what he’d seen. Perhaps he wasn’t ready, as I was not.

  He rose and extended his hand. “We did right today, Portier. No decision in this life is perfect. Would I could see ways to make such complexities more just, more nuanced. But that will take someone more subtle than either of us.”

  I kissed his ring. “Aye, my lord. We’ll leave that for the future. And we’d best catch the villain first.”

  Likely he noticed I spoke only of Michel. And that I was not such a fool as to take Dante’s ring.

  UNABLE TO CONSIDER SLEEP, I decided to roust Ilario and tell him of the trial. “My lord’s off meddling,” said his surly valet, John Deune, who answered the chevalier’s door. “Summat to do with the traitor’s wife, no matter such is no proper concern of a gentleman.”

  The ever-awkward Deune took as much ridicule as his master, and with far less grace. I wondered that Ilario kept him on. I surmised no danger that the testy, dull-witted valet would decipher his master’s secrets or develop ties with more clever courtiers who might.

  I trundled off in search of the Lady Madeleine, curious as to Ilario’s “meddling.” A footman told me the Chevalier de Sylvae had headed off swearing and cursing, “as was wholly unlike himself,” after visiting the Conte Ruggiere’s private courtyard. “ ’Twas surely the strange goings out there,” he said, embarrassed. He could describe what he meant only as unlikely compared to his experience of noble ladies.

  Following the young man’s direction, I threaded a snarl of west wing passages into the dark corner of a walled garden. The scent of jasmine hung heavy on the summer night, and clicking beetles and trilling nightbirds were accompanied by the rhythmic scrape of steel on dirt and stone. Someone was digging . . . and humming. I drew aside a cascading vine.

  A woman dressed in soiled white gauze sat inside a ring of fifty lit candles, plunging a spade into the dirt. Mounds of freshly turned earth pocked what had once been a square of grass and curving rose beds. The rosebushes themselves were broken and straggling, petals littering the ravaged yard. Cascades of flowering vines lay in great heaps, ripped from the enclosing walls.

  “Mama, please come inside.” Lianelle de Vernase crouched outside the ring of candles. “Ani’s back. We need to tell you about Ambrose.”

  “But I cannot, my darling!” The woman leapt up and whirled around, her gown knocking several candles to the grass so that Lianelle had to stomp on the little flames before they set the lady or the garden alight. “So much yet to be done. I must bury every blossom before I go in, else how will they grow? Neither father nor son will come home till all the flowers are buried and risen anew.”

  Madeleine de Cazar’s cheeks, arms, and flushed cheeks were smeared with dirt, and spittle ran down her chin. Her hair, unbound and tangled, flew wild in the night breeze. Her eyes flared excessively bright in the candlelight . . . and bore not the least scrap of reason.

  No wonder Anne and Ambrose de Vernase harbored such spearing hatred. And no wonder at Ilario’s distress . . . ever the chevalier at a woman’s trouble. I refused to believe my questions had done this to Lady Madeleine, nor that Ilario would imagine it so.

  Father Creator! Fear a viper’s fang in my craw, I bolted for the east wing.

  Dante’s door stood open. Beyond it lay a horror to chill the soul. The mage’s staff belched a scarlet whirlwind that had trapped Ilario at its heart. The young lord hung in the red mist above the circumoccule, a blur of pale skin, flailing limbs, and ragged lace and satin, spinning like a child’s top.


  “Was it the priggish librarian who allowed you to imagine you have a mind, peacock? Perhaps I must send you through the glass and leave you a splotch on the paving to convince the earnest little insect that I mean what I say.”

  As I held speechless in the doorway, the red blur raced toward the windows, the garish reflection doubling the dread spectacle. But before a disastrous collision, the scarlet light vanished in an explosive brilliance, and Ilario plummeted to a heap at Dante’s feet.

  “Th’art a devil, mage. A dastard.” Speech slurred, the chevalier pulled himself to his knees. “Don’t need a fine education t’see it. You must heal the—Oof.”

  The heel of Dante’s staff slammed Ilario’s belly hard enough to shove him backward. “Must, cloudwit?”

  “Stop this,” I said.

  “Must heal . . . contessa . . .” Another blow and Ilario gasped and doubled over. His hand twitched toward his sword, but he merely clenched his fist and shook it feebly . . . impotently . . . at the mage. Merciful god, he was not going to break his mask.

  “Must, fool?” Another vicious blow.

  Ilario groaned. “You. Ensorceled. Lady.”

  The mage raised the staff again.

  “Dante!”

  The mage’s head jerked up, and his cold green eyes met mine. With a snarl, he slammed the staff down on Ilario’s shoulder. Ilario bellowed in agony.

  I charged. “Stop this, you misbegotten Souleater! Are you mad?”

  Ilario bellowed, as the carved hornbeam landed yet again, this time on his upper arm. The bones cracked and ground. A quick blow to his side silenced his cry, just as I skidded to my knees and threw myself over him.

  “Get this whining, lying dancepole out of my apartments.” Dante raised his staff again, but it did not fall.