The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  Tessa counted back seven years from thirteen hundred and fifty-two and then flipped over the second-to-last illumination in the series. Emith’s neat, now not-quite-so-black script, proclaimed the date as “the twelfth day in the eleventh month of the thirteen hundredth and forty-fifth year.”

  Seeing it Tessa leaned back against her chair, her body suddenly seeming too heavy for her bones. The date on the manuscript—the month and the year—corresponded exactly to the last major tinnitus attack she’d had before the incident on the freeway. The lecture hall at New Mexico State. Professor Yarback. The slide from the Lindisfarne Gospels. It was the attack that had forced her to leave college and move to California, to San Diego. Where she stayed for seven years until she found the ring.

  Tessa put her hands over her face, covering her eyes and nose and mouth. She couldn’t believe the scale of what Deveric had done. The depth of his interference in her life. He had used her tinnitus as casually as he used Emith’s pigments. It was just another of his scribing tools, like his leadpoint plummet, his wax tablet, and his knife.

  Those pale gray coils that hung suspended within each page like smoke trapped in glass were a record of her tinnitus.

  Five major attacks in her life. Five illuminations in Deveric’s grand design.

  Hands enclosing around the yellowest and stiffest leaf, Tessa took a quick guess at the month she had experienced her first ever tinnitus attack. She remembered being outside at the time, wearing a short-sleeved dress and feeling warm: sometime in high summer, perhaps July or August. She already knew, without seeing the date, that the year would be exactly right. Twenty-one years ago it had happened: she had been five years old at the time.

  Once again, Emith’s script, now faded to a pale, uneven brown, proclaimed the date: “The third day of the eight month in the thirteen hundredth and thirty-first year.”

  August. Twenty-one years earlier.

  Deveric had been manipulating her all along.

  Tessa’s head was reeling. Not in a fast, chaotic way, but in one slow, incredulous turn. She couldn’t begin to imagine the implications, couldn’t begin to think what it all meant.

  Two months after that first attack, she and her family had moved from England to New York. Her father had been offered a job in his company’s U.S. office, and Tessa could still recall her mother urging her father to take it: “The change might do Tessa good. We don’t want her having another of those attacks like the one on the lawn.”

  With a quick breath, Tessa picked up the second illumination in the series. “The eighteenth day of the eleventh month in the thirteen hundredth and thirty-eighth year.” The year and the month were not a surprise. She was twelve at the time, living at an apartment on Riverside Drive with her parents. She was on her way home from school when the tinnitus began.

  The traffic was bumper to bumper along Broadway. Tessa remembered getting off the school bus before her stop, thinking she could walk the distance home faster. As soon as her feet hit the road, things began to go wrong. A car cut alongside the bus, brakes squealing. The driver screamed abuse at Tessa for causing him to stop. When she reached the sidewalk a second car sped through a puddle, sending cold muddy water splashing over her coat. In a nearby doorway two men were arguing, their rising and falling voices jarring against Tessa’s nerves. Suddenly the whole street seemed full of noises: horns blasting, music blaring, children shrieking, metal shutters rattling as shop owners shut up shop for the night. A woman in a camel coat too short to cover her calf-length dress walked past Tessa, pulling a thin, yelping dog at her heels. Somewhere in the distance a police siren began to wail.

  Tessa ran all the way home, palms pressed close to her ears to shut out the noise. By the time she got to her building she realized she was no longer keeping outside noises out, but rather keeping her tinnitus in.

  Looking back on it now, seeing it through the filter of the gray spirals on the vellum, Tessa realized the attack coincided with another move. Her father again: some sort of reshuffle at work had left him unhappy, and he was contemplating leaving to take up a position as sales manager to a distribution firm in St. Louis. Tessa’s doctor saying to him, “Your daughter will be better off away from all the noise and bustle of the city,” may not have been the deciding factor, but they had moved the following month all the same.

  Tessa placed the illumination on the desk. All her earlier excitement had drained away, leaving her feeling too tired to be angry or amazed.

  She didn’t have to look at the date on the third illumination to know what it was and what it corresponded to. A company picnic: Tessa, fourteen years old, sitting at the executives’ table with her parents, her father gripping her wrist and refusing to let her leave. Flies buzzing past her ears, sweat trickling down her back, children shrieking around the “little people’s table.” The tinnitus came on so quickly and with such venom that Tessa blacked out. Right there. She fainted in the middle of the sales director’s speech, falling across the executive picnic table, upsetting paper cups and plates and checkered paper towels, sending plastic ketchup and mustard containers rolling to the floor.

  Everyone had been as kind as they could be. They’d picked her up, given her water and aspirin. The sales director’s wife had even brushed down Tessa’s dress. But the next week, during an unscheduled management meeting, the sales director had informed Tessa’s father that a promotion he had been expecting was going to “Jack Riggs in the Lexington office. There’s a lot of traveling involved in the job, and we felt it was best tackled by a younger man who doesn’t have a family to worry about.”

  Three months later, faced with the possibility that if he stayed with his current firm, he would always be passed over for promotion, Tessa’s father had moved his family to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Another job. Another state. Another move westward toward the ring.

  “Here, miss. Drink this. Mother says you’re looking a little pale.” Emith’s voice was gentle as it broke through Tessa’s thoughts. A hand touched her arm very lightly, and another laid a steaming drink on the tabletop beside the illuminations.

  “Are you feeling quite well, my dear?” came Mother Emith’s voice from her chair.

  Although she wasn’t feeling quite well at all, Tessa nodded. Her head ached with a deep, splitting pain. Her eyes were sore, and the muscles around her heart felt oddly tight. Somehow, while she had sat here, something that started out as almost impossible to believe had hardened into plain fact.

  Deveric had manipulated her life. And not only her life, but the life of her family too. His pigment-stained fingerprints were stamped upon every move she and her parents had made.

  Just how deep did it go? Where did it end? Things that had seemed like mere chance before, such as finding herself living in San Diego after she’d left college when her intended destination was Los Angeles, began to take on the look of a sinister plot, every bit as intricate and carefully planned as the patterns Deveric drew. A night spent in a San Diego motel because her tinnitus had begun to bother her on the freeway, a newspaper left outside her room, a Help Wanted ad asking for telesales operators with “no experience necessary,” suddenly didn’t seem like coincidences anymore. Deveric had been pushing her all the way.

  Tessa picked up the steaming cup. It was warm in her hands. Lemon and honey smells curled up with the steam.

  “Drink it all up, my dear,” Mother Emith said. “It will put some color back in your cheeks.” Then, turning to Emith: “Take the dumplings from the pot and see to it that Tessa gets a good portion—plenty of sauce.”

  The old woman sounded worried. Normally Tessa would have spoken up to reassure her, but right now she didn’t trust herself to speak. The enormity of what Deveric had done to her was settling in her mind like a fine but heavy dust. It lay like lead ash on her tongue.

  Was her tinnitus real? Or had it been something Deveric conjured up at will, a magician’s sleight of hand? Either way he had used it against her, summoning it forth with his fine-cut
nib and his diluted lampblack ink, directing her actions with a crack of his thumb knuckle and a practiced flick of his wrist.

  Tessa shivered. For the first time since she had come here, Mother Emith’s kitchen actually seemed cold. The chair she sat in felt like stone.

  Tessa’s eyes gazed straight ahead without seeing a thing. Her mind looked backward and saw a life that had never quite been her own. Opportunities missed, friendships overlooked, interests, relationships, and ambitions pushed aside. Deveric had drawn her a shell. The gray threads that spiraled through each of his illuminations might as well have had barbs all their own. They kept everyone and everything away.

  Tessa took a sip of the lemon honey tea. It was bitter and sweet all in one.

  As soon as she put the cup down, her hands strayed back to the vellum. Why had Deveric gone to all this trouble? Why was it so important to bring her here? Fingers grazing across the bands of green, yellow, and gold pigments, Tessa slowly shook her head. She didn’t know. Yet, she thought, stretching the word out as her gaze came to focus on the barbs around the gold, the answer was here, in the parchment.

  Watching the gold wink slyly in the shade, Tessa made a decision.

  “Emith,” she called, sitting back in her chair, “forget about the food. Come and show me all the things I need to know about selecting and using pigments.” Tomorrow she was going to paint a pattern of her own and discover for herself what no one seemed willing, or able, to tell her.

  Gerta pulled back the sheet as if it concealed a wanted criminal beneath. “Aha!” she cried, gaze locking onto the red stain that formed the center of the bed. “When did this happen?” she demanded, moving in closer to touch the offending mark.

  Angeline kicked Snowy into action. The little dog scrambled onto the bed and snapped at Gerta’s hand, all the while barking his piercing no-good bark and wagging his short no-good tail. Shocked, Gerta yanked back her outstretched hand, returning a moment later with a fist.

  “Bad dog!” she cried, swinging a punch Snowy’s way.

  Snowy defended the red stain. Little paws dancing, hackles rising, teeth snapping, and fur bristling: having a thoroughly enjoyable no-good dog time. Seeing him in action, Angeline suspected that Snowy had harbored a secret desire to bite Gerta’s hand all along.

  Having missed with the first punch, Gerta tried a second, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it and she missed by a margin as wide as her own formidable Garizon head. “Angeline! You really should discipline this dog,” she said, turning away from Snowy, the bed, and, most important of all, the deep red stain.

  Angeline hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath until she went to speak, and it rushed out ahead of her words like a draft rushing in through an opening door. “I’m sorry, Gerta. I don’t know what’s got into Snowy these days.”

  As she spoke, Angeline moved toward the bed, casually picked up the sheet Gerta had pulled away, and threw it back over the mattress: Snowy, stain, and all. Snowy didn’t take kindly to being covered and began jumping up and snapping at the descending sheet as if it were a large, gliding bird. The sight of Snowy attacking the covers very nearly made Angeline laugh out loud, but she hadn’t spent an afternoon planning for just this moment to give herself away at the last minute.

  What she needed to do now was draw Gerta away from the bed and get her mind working on something else. “The blood came on earlier when I went to take a nap before supper,” she said quickly. “I hadn’t been feeling well since midday, when I had that pheasant pie Dham Fitzil warmed up—”

  “Dham Fitzil is a born fool!” interrupted Gerta. “No one in their right mind reheats pheasant pie two days after it’s been cooked. Why, she might as well give us all a dose of henbane and poison us on the spot!” Gerta shook her head vehemently, her entire body and its many attachments—girdle book, sewing bag, scissors, handkerchiefs, combs, tweezers, perfume flask, and cosmetic purse—swinging with it. “I swear one day she’ll kill us all!”

  Angeline nodded in complete agreement. Gerta hated the cook. She and Dham Fitzil were the two highest-ranking female servants in Sern Fortress, and the rivalry between them was neither friendly nor subdued. They disliked, distrusted, and disagreed with each other at every given chance. Both women felt it was their right to oversee the housekeeping and all the remaining women servants in the fortress. Angeline didn’t care a jot either way who was in charge, she just knew that Gerta liked to criticize Dham Fitzil almost as much as she liked to discuss women’s troubles.

  Walking away from the bed toward the fire, Angeline said, “This means I’m not pregnant, doesn’t it?”

  Gerta glanced back toward the bed. Snowy, who had successfully managed to extricate himself from the sheets while Gerta was speaking, growled right on cue. Gerta made a noise that sounded just like a growl right back at him, then turned toward Angeline. “From what I saw of the blood it looked good and dark, m’lady.” She lowered her voice slightly, made a minute eye gesture toward Angeline’s stomach, and said, “Is it still flowing?”

  Angeline nodded. She thought for a moment and then sat on the bench nearest the fire. Sitting suddenly seemed more appropriate than standing.

  Gerta sighed. “It’s menses, then. I’ve been hoping against hope that you would have conceived, but it doesn’t look like it’s to be.” Her smile was gentle. “Perhaps next time, m’lady.”

  Feeling a teeny bit guilty, Angeline nodded some more. “I’m sorry, Gerta,” she said. “I did everything you told me.”

  “I know you did, m’lady. I know you did.” Gerta patted her shoulder. “I just don’t like the thought of you being dragged across the mountains to Rhaize, that’s all. A military camp is no place for a young lady like you.”

  “You’ll come too, won’t you, Gerta?” The idea of traveling to Izgard’s camp without Gerta was unthinkable. Gerta might be many things—bossy, nosy, and overly familiar, to name but a few—but Angeline cared for her all the same. She had grown accustomed to having her around.

  Gerta nodded. “Of course I’ll come, m’lady,” she said in her most motherly voice. “What sort of lady’s companion could I call myself if I let my lady travel to Rhaize alone, with only guards and horses to speak to?” As she spoke, Gerta moved back toward the bed. “Well, I’ll just take these sheets to the laundress and then go and advise Lord Browlach about your condition. He’ll be wanting to send a message to the king this very night.”

  Angeline darted from the bench. Snowy, whose sole job in this whole scheme was to guard the red-stained sheet until Gerta left, was nowhere to be seen. The little dog was up to his no-good tricks.

  Diving into the rapidly diminishing space between Gerta and the bed, Angeline cried, “I’ll take the sheets downstairs, Gerta. You go straight to Lord Browlach and tell him the news.”

  A moment of silence followed. Gerta’s face registered bewildered surprise, followed by something that may well have been suspicion. Angeline’s heart beat against her rib cage so hard, she was sure the old maid could hear it. The stain on the sheet wasn’t blood at all. It was pigment. Vermilion ink she had found in a chest in Ederius’ scriptorium after she and Gerta had left the courtyard this morning. Slipped into her bodice, brought to her chamber, and spilled into the appropriate dip on the bed: it had both the look and feel of blood.

  Angeline didn’t want to stay in Sern Fortress. Not for nine months. And although she wasn’t sure whether or not she was pregnant, she was taking no chances. If Gerta needed to see blood to let her go to Rhaize, then blood she would see. Only now it looked as if she wouldn’t see blood at all. The pigment may have been the exact same color and consistency of blood, but it didn’t smell the same, and if Gerta got her hands on it, she would surely be able to tell the difference.

  “Nonsense, m’lady,” Gerta said, pouncing into action. “I can’t let you walk up and down the stairs feeling as you do at the moment. You need to lie down, not go running about the fortress with laundry.” With that she pushed Angeline a
side and made a grab for the sheet.

  Angeline furrowed her brow, stamped her foot, and willed a clever excuse to come into her head. Nothing came. Her mind was a blank, Snowy was nowhere to be seen, and Gerta’s hand was making a beeline for the stain.

  Cursing her own stupidity, Angeline gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, preparing to be caught. Why couldn’t she be as clever as other women?

  A second passed. A soft, sheet-swishing noise came from the bed. One of Gerta’s old bones cracked as she bent forward.

  Angeline couldn’t bear to look. She was in just about the worst trouble a person could be in. What would Izgard say when he found out? Angeline shuddered. What would he do?

  A noise that sounded suspiciously like a finger being poked against a mattress was followed swiftly by a sharp intake of breath.

  “Why, that dirty, disgusting dog!” exclaimed Gerta, voice rising to an indignant squeal. “Snowy! You come here this minute!”

  Confused, Angeline opened her eyes. She had been gritting her teeth so hard, her jaw ached.

  Gerta yanked the sheet from the bed and thrust it toward Angeline. “Have you seen what that no-good dog has done?” she cried.

  As Angeline shook her head she caught a strong ammonia whiff in her nostrils. The stain on the sheet was larger and pinker than she remembered it.

  “That dog of yours has wet the sheet—right on the bloodied spot.” Gerta waved the offending linen in front of Angeline’s nose as if it were a severed head. “It’s disgusting. If you don’t start training him soon, m’lady, then by all five gods I will!”

  Gerta was shaking so hard that all of her various maidly attachments chimed together like tinkling bells. Fuming, she bundled up the sheet into a loose ball, dog urine and bloodstain packed out of sight in the center, and stormed toward the door. “If this happens again,” she said, spinning around on the threshold, “then I’ll get the seneschal to slice off his tail.” With that she stalked out of the room, one solitary corner of the sheet trailing behind her like a train.