Scholar of Decay

by Tanya Huff

  Turning back the way he’d come, Dmitri thought about going home. He wanted to talk to Aurek. Aurek always knew the answers and was more than willing to tell his younger brother what to do—usually it was the most irritating thing about him, but tonight it would be a comfort.

  And then, almost as though the gods had read the desire of his heart, he saw a familiar silhouette making its way along the lower esplanade. There could be no mistaking either the breadth of Aurek’s shoulders or the silver line of his braid. Before Dmitri could move to join him, Aurek looked up.

  Too far away to read his brother’s expression, Dmitri saw the shoulders slump and Aurek turn abruptly into the dark mouth of an alley. He waited, but no one emerged.

  He saw me. I know he saw. His chest felt as though there were iron bands wrapped tight around it. It was just like when he was a kid with four older sisters who made a pet of him and one older brother he desperately wanted to be close to. An older brother who never had time for him.

  It wasn’t just the difference in their ages, Dmitri had realized when he reached his teens; it was because he wasn’t smart enough. What difference did it make if he could run faster or fight better than all the other boys his age? Aurek was a scholar, and it was clear that scholarship was all that mattered to him.

  Dmitri had finally stopped trying when Aurek had turned away from the awkward words of sympathy he’d offered at Natalia’s death. She’d almost been his friend—would have been, he was sure, had she lived—but his grief and his pain had meant nothing to Aurek.

  Not a thing either of them had been able to say—and Dmitri had said plenty—had prevented their sisters from sending them together to Richemulot. Although as Ivana Boritsi’s attraction had grown more marked he’d recognized the need to leave Borca and welcomed the chance for adventure, the last thing he’d wanted was Aurek’s company.

  “You haven’t a choice and neither does he.” All four sisters had made that clear. “Perhaps as two adults you can be friends.”

  There didn’t seem to be a chance of that happening now.

  He’d been shut out of Aurek’s plans and discovered he’d been lied to all his life—Aurek was more than a mere scholar.

  And now it was painfully obvious: he was still the younger brother Aurek had no time for.

  Brushing the back of one hand over his cheeks, scrubbing away angry tears, Dmitri squared his shoulders and turned toward the black bulk of the Renier estate.

  Aurek sagged against a building and wondered if Dmitri would come after him. He was too exhausted, too ashamed of his failure, to endure his brother’s anger.

  There’d been nothing but angry accusations between them since Dmitri had begun to keep company with Louise Renier.

  Perhaps Edik was right. Perhaps he should tell Dmitri the truth—not the truth about the wererats, for with the loss of the workshop he still needed Jacqueline Renier’s permission to search in Richemulot—but the truth about himself.

  Laughing bitterly, he pushed himself erect and continued toward home. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea of where to start. Shall I burden him with the disaster I’ve made of my life? Can I trust him not to share the details with his new friends?

  Natalia had believed in the boy, but could he entrust her fragile existence to someone who could, even in ignorance, share the bed of Louise Renier?

  He couldn’t risk it.

  Vermin Indeed. Trust the Young to Want Immediate gratification. They should have made the old man suffer for that insult, toyed with him, killed him more slowly. Forced him to watch them devour his steaming entrails …

  “Louise?” Dmitri captured one of her hands in his, frowning as he noticed how warm her skin was and how damp her palm. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry.” She forced a smile—he need never know she forced it through irritation rather than some gentler emotion—and truthfully explained, “I just can’t help thinking about that old man.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, I want you to tell me everything. We should have no secrets between us, and this is something that affected you deeply.” Leaning forward, she touched him lightly on the cheek with her free hand. “I want to be there for your pain.”

  Missing the double meaning, as he was intended to, Dmitri sighed. “I’m glad somebody does.”

  “Aurek! I can’t believe anyone would treat a brother in such a way! Turning his back on you! Reniers would never turn their backs on family!” Watching him wince as her words deliberately rubbed salt in his wounds, she reflected that, among her family, a turned back usually ended up wearing a dagger embedded hilt-deep. “How I hate to see a family torn apart like this.”

  “It’s not my doing,” Dmitri murmured, sliding off the chaise to the library floor and resting his head on her knee.

  “I know, dear one. It’s him. It’s all him.” Her voice wrapped him in sympathy and warm concern. “He treats you as if you were nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Dmitri agreed mournfully. “He thinks more of that figurine of his wife than he does of me.”

  The figurine. The hand that had been reaching down to stroke Dmitri’s hair lifted to rub at Louise’s cheek, though there were no whiskers there to groom. She’d forgotten something, something important about that figurine. She could feel the heat of his sigh against her leg.

  “If he had to choose between us, I sure wouldn’t be his first choice. Remember how I told you I picked it up once and he practically threw me out of the house?”

  “How could I forget him hurting you like that?” He picked it up! And if he did it once, she thought gleefully, he can do it again. Her brow wrinkled slightly. It seemed very likely that Dmitri’s blood relationship with Aurek neutralized the effects of the protection spell. Or perhaps the spell just wasn’t in place at the time. She considered the possibility and decided that it didn’t matter. If Dmitri couldn’t get her the figurine, then he’d die in the attempt—catering to his constant juvenile self-pity and the perpetual need to shore up his tender male ego was becoming just a tad tedious.

  “I know how you can force Aurek to pay attention to you,” she murmured. “Take the little statue of his wife away from him and refuse to give it back until he listens to your concerns.”

  Dmitri twisted around so that he could look up at her adoringly, his chin pillowed on the arm he rested on her knee. “It’s a wonderful idea,” he said regretfully, “but you’ve forgotten that Aurek’s a wizard. If I take away the figurine of Natalia, he’ll just take it back.”

  Eyes glittering in the flickering light of the library fire, Louise smiled. “Not if you bring it to me.”

  Dmitri had come in, as usual, long after Aurek had gone to bed and would, so close to dawn, still be asleep. Aurek paused in the hall outside his brother’s room, one hand on the latch. A restless night, twisting and turning in tangled bedclothes, had brought with it the realization that he owed Dmitri an apology. To have turned away from him so obviously had offered him a grievous insult.

  After a moment spent listening to the prodding of his guilt, he sighed quietly and shook his head.

  Dragged out of a sound sleep, Dmitri would be sullen and resentful, in no mood to listen to anything he had to say.

  I’ll wait, Aurek decided, shrugging his pack up onto his shoulders as he continued down the hall, ignoring, as best he could, the mocking laughter that accompanied him. There’ll be time enough to speak with him tonight.

  Dmitri heard Aurek leave his room, heard him come down the hall, boot soles slapping against the uncarpeted floor. Then, to his amazement, he heard him stop right in front of the bedroom door.

  Ear pressed against the wood, Dmitri froze, barely daring to breathe. What does he think he’s doing? Sluggishly—for he’d gotten very little sleep in the short while he’d been home—he tried to come up with a plausible reason that would explain his being up and fully dressed should his brother open the door. To his relief, Aurek started moving again.

>   He listened as Aurek descended the stairs, then waited, heart pounding uncomfortably hard, until he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of the front door closing.

  Slipping quietly from his room, avoiding the loudest of the creaking floorboards in the hall, he made his way to Aurek’s study. Outside the door he paused, his hand on the latch, voices out of the past ringing in his ears.

  Old voices.

  “No, Dmitri, don’t go in there.”

  “You must never bother your brother when he’s in his study.”

  “The master is in his study and does not wish to be disturbed.”

  And a more recent one.

  “I told you to never come in here!”

  “I have work to do. Important work. Get out! Leave us alone!”

  “Get out!”

  “Get! Out!”

  Jaw set, teeth gritted, he opened the door.

  Aurek’s study was just a room with a desk, some shelves, and a pedestal in an alcove. Dmitri hadn’t really taken the time to look around at it during his single visit—at first he’d been too worried about his brother, and then he’d been too mad at him—but his imagination had filled a wizard’s sanctuary with the strange and the bizarre. His imagination had gotten it pretty much completely wrong. There were scorch marks on the floor by the fireplace as though something burning had fallen out past the edge of the stone hearth, desk and shelves were piled high with notes in Aurek’s illegible handwriting, ruined pens and uncut quills were scattered randomly about, and a large map of the city had been pegged to one wall and covered in strange notations, but there was no indication that the usual occupant of the room was a wizard.

  No newt eyes. No frog toes. No bat wool. No dog tongues. Only the light over the figurine, light that had, as far as Dmitri could determine, no source.

  The Natalia he remembered had not been beautiful like Louise was beautiful; she was softer, gentler, kinder. She always seemed to understand what he meant, and though she laughed frequently, she never once laughed at him. Aurek had adored her, and if she’d had a fault at all in Dmitri’s eyes it was in the way she’d hung on Aurek’s every word as though it were holy writ.

  “Just what his overblown ego needed,” Dmitri muttered, looking down at the statue. “Another woman telling him how smart he was.” Their sisters had always been very vocal about that. “Frankly, I’m amazed he got his nose out of a book long enough to get married, let alone stay married for three years.”

  As far as he was concerned, Natalia was the best thing that had ever happened to his brother. While she was alive, Aurek had been almost human.

  Lightly stroking the figurine’s upraised arm, he shook his head. “I wonder why he had this commissioned in such a stupid pose.” Maybe, if Louise’s plan worked and he and Aurek actually held a conversation, he could ask. In the meantime …

  He scooped up the statue and wrapped it carefully in a silk scarf, then a piece of sheepskin, then he tucked it into the bottom of a small leather pouch. Louise’s instructions had been explicit: “Do everything you must to see that it isn’t damaged in any way. We want only to get his attention; we don’t want him to turn whatever powers he might have against us.”

  “I’m his brother,” Dmitri had reminded her.

  “And he’s already made it clear that he thinks more of the figurine than he does of you.”

  An inarguable observation.

  Back in his own room, Dmitri shrugged into his greatcoat and set the pouch on top of the clothing he’d packed into a small carpetbag. Louise wanted him to stay at the Chateau until he and Aurek straightened things out between them. Considering how Aurek would likely react to the loss of the statue, Dmitri figured that his absence from the house would be a definite plus on the survival side of the ledger.

  He stretched out his hand toward his sword, hanging over the bed on two pegs, and let it fall again. Swords were not a part of fashionable dress in Pont-a-Museau. He hadn’t worn his since he’d arrived. At the door, he turned and shrugged ruefully before recrossing the room, taking down the sword, and buckling it on. It looked ludicrous against the full skirts of his greatcoat, so he removed it and put it back on beneath the coat. It wasn’t a special weapon by any means. It wasn’t even an expensive weapon, but it was his, and he wasn’t going to leave it here for Aurek to destroy in a fit of petty revenge.

  Jean roused as the front door slammed a second time, and he poked his muzzle over the edge of the roof. The brother of the human who’d killed his brother was leaving the house. Alone.

  The wererat snarled softly as his prey moved toward the river. A boat would delay the hunt yet again, as it had when the young idiot left the chateau by way of the gazebo just before dawn.

  Dmitri scanned the narrow channel of the river flowing turgidly past the house, but there were no boats close enough to hail. Shifting his carpetbag into his left hand and shooting a nervous glance back at the curtained windows, he started toward the nearest bridge.

  “I guess it won’t hurt to walk,” he told a disinterested pigeon as it strutted from his path. “Maybe a little fresh air will make up for the lack of sleep.”

  The prey was walking. Jean scrambled over the rooftop and down a drainpipe, eyes slitted nearly closed against the early morning light. There would be no white-haired girl arriving to save the prey this time; the family went abroad by day only when it had plans for mayhem the night could not fulfill.

  I’ve never seen this place so dead. Dmitri paused on the arc of the bridge and stared upriver and down, looking for some sign that he wasn’t the only living creature awake in the city. A sudden bang whipped him around only to see the tiny figure of a servant struggling to close an upper shutter blown back by the wind. He watched until the … Man? Woman? At this distance he couldn’t be sure.… until the servant succeeded, then started walking again, feeling reassured.

  The black slate roof of the Renier estate on Delanuit Island was visible over similar rooftops on Craindre Island. Dmitri stared at the rutted path cutting through the ruins in the center of the island and then at the safer, longer road that led around to the northeast bridge. He’d just borrowed his brother’s most prized possession, and all at once, taking the shorter route to safety made a great deal of sense. He’d never have dared cut across the island at night but, in the pale light of day, it seemed foolish to trade a possible risk for a probable one.

  The path quickly left inhabited buildings behind. As alert as very little sleep and his recent lifestyle allowed, Dmitri followed it through a gap in a crumbling wall and into what had once been the extensive grounds of a city estate. Not nearly as large as the Chateau Delanuit, there was still an impressive amount of land involved, considering that Pont-a-Museau had been built over an archipelago where land had been at a premium from the very beginning.

  In the years since the estate had been abandoned, the trees had grown up and created a small forest in the center of the island. Although the deadfall had been cleared away, no one apparently wanted to spend time enough in the trees’ midst to actually cut any of them down. There were no stumps and no sign of axe or saw. The bare branches of the deciduous trees clutched at the sky like greedy fingers, and the evergreens held pockets of shadow, deep and black. The air smelled of mold and fungus and decay.

  Dmitri’s heart leaped into his throat as three crows exploded into sudden flight, screaming insults. Forcing a shaky laugh, he watched them, silhouetted against the sky, until he lost them in the pattern of branches. Then, shaking his head at his overreaction, he continued toward Chateau Delanuit.

  He took two steps, boots making no sound against the thick mat of fallen, rotting leaves; then he stopped, as it occurred to him to wonder what had spooked the crows.

  In any and all of their three forms, wererats preferred to attack from the rear—though they seldom wasted their efforts on a quick kill. In full rat form, they used their speed and their razor-sharp teeth to dart in and, with a sideswipe of their wedge-shaped heads, hamstrin
g their opponents. A man or woman lying screaming on the ground, unable to stand, became little threat and could provide hours of enjoyable terror.

  Jean had fully intended to take Dmitri down the way he had so many others. He’d pictured it over and over in his head as he’d followed the human’s trail. He planned to make the dying last as long as possible, and he meant to enjoy every moment of it.

  Unfortunately, when it came time to actually attack the brother of the man who’d killed his brother, his fury became more than he could control, and he launched himself, shrieking with fury, at the back of the human’s neck.

  The sudden weight flung Dmitri flat on his face, pain searing through one shoulder. He could feel coarse whiskers crushed against his ear, hotly fetid breath against his cheek, and claws ripping apart the protective layers of his clothing. Both arms were beneath him. Somehow he managed to get his palms flat against the ground. Using all his strength, he shoved himself up into the air, and then, muscles popping, he turned over backward. For a moment, he held whatever creature that had attacked him pinned.

  An instant later, he leaped to his feet, leaving the greatcoat behind. As the creature fought its way free of the heavy folds of cloth, Dmitir drew his sword and threw the scabbard to one side.

  The rat facing him was as large as the four he’d seen that night in the alley, the four who’d eaten that poor man alive. But that man had been unarmed and outnumbered. Dmitri smiled. He was neither.

  “En garde, rodent!” He couldn’t remember which of his friends had laughingly made the comment, but it seemed apt.

  Snarling with rage, the giant rat glared up at him with glittering ebony eyes, naked tail lashing the air.