When the King Comes Home

by Caroline Stevermer

  “By all means borrow it. I recommend it.” I glanced at the wreckage of my efforts with the candles. “In return, all I really want is some decent wax. Would you ask her for me? I want to make a model.”

  “I did wonder.” Ludo studied the ruined candles with open curiosity. “I thought you might be trying to eat them.”

  “I want to make a model of the votive crown Maspero made for St. Istvan’s at Dalager. Rigo doesn’t want to hear me talk about Maspero any longer. I’m going to have to find another way to explain what Maspero did.”

  Ludo looked resigned. “The girl who cried Maspero.”

  “So if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like the modeling wax. About a pound and a half should be plenty.”

  “Very well. Amyas and your father asked me to tell you that your family is fine. So are Saskia and the rest. Do you have any messages for them?”

  I stared at him for a moment. “You make it sound as if I’m at death’s door.”

  “It isn’t usually the happiest of circumstances, being confined to the palace.”

  “Rigo wants my help with his ritual. It can’t take much longer, whatever he’s planning.”

  “The preparations are complete. He’s waiting for the new moon. Three more days.”

  “Then I’m all the more eager for the modeling wax. Give Father my love and tell the others I miss them. But bring me the wax.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll pay you for it now.” I took out my earrings and offered them to him.

  Ludo took them and tucked them carefully away. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you might try to bribe someone with these. I’ll return them to you someday. In the meantime, be patient and try to behave yourself. That’s all I’m asking. Try.” He left with Madame Carriera’s notebook and I was alone again, with nothing to do but wish for a larger breakfast.

  That night my dinner tray held a bowl of soup and a pound and a half of modeling wax. I finished the soup and started to make a proper model of the crown. The next morning there was no breakfast at all, only water. Rigo had given orders, I was informed. In preparation for the ritual, I was to fast. I was also to memorize some lines of gibberish. The text of the ritual had been written out in full. My lines were mercifully few.

  I knew Rigo would not wish to hear my theory of Maspero’s work. Better than a lecture on rampart design would be a model of the votive crown. I learned what the wax would do and what it wouldn’t. The need for compromise became a challenge in itself. I used my eyes and my hands. In the end, the time ran faster than I realized.

  Three hours before the ritual was to begin, I was escorted to the baths, where women coached my ritual responses as they helped me clean myself and then dress in robes of sackcloth. I was ready with an hour to spare. I wondered if they’d expected me to put up a fight.

  Instead, I was so peaceable they took me back to my room and locked me in. I was glad of the extra time. I had finished the model, but every time I looked at it I thought of a new refinement.

  I was still working on the wax crown when the summons came to attend Rigo in his improvised workroom. I wrapped the delicate model in a cloth and carried it with me. In addition to my allotted two guards, Tig accompanied me. I was glad to see him.

  “The prince-bishop will be there for the ceremony,” Tig said. “Rigo had better keep it short or that furnace will suffocate someone. It isn’t meant for such a place.”

  One of my guards turned back frowning. “Hush, now.” Tig was silent the rest of the way.

  Rigo’s cistern was warm. The furnace had dried out the mud on the floor. Many feet had trodden that crisp mud into dust, which had sifted into the air of the great chamber. It was hard to breathe freely there. For the first time I was uncomfortably aware of the mass of masonry above us. The palace seemed to brood over our heads. So disconcerting was the sense of dry heat in such a place, I felt restive standing there. To cover my uneasiness, I folded back the cloth to reveal my wax model. “I must show you something,” I began. “Careful, this is delicate.”

  “We’re ready to begin,” said Rigo. He stood beside the prince-bishop in the center of the ring. Except for the guards, the three of us were alone.

  Three days fasting had done nothing for my disposition. “I’m not ready. You haven’t told me what you’re doing.”

  “You’ve learned the ritual,” Rigo said. “You’re word perfect in your lines.”

  “You haven’t told me what the ritual does.”

  The prince-bishop took the wax model from me and set it with care on the worktable. “Your role is simple. We must recast the siege medal. What power Dalet wields over Julian, either for her own benefit or that of Edward of Ardres, is linked to that. We know this, for it was the medal that called Julian back. It was stolen from among Julian’s remains by one of the brothers at the abbey. His whereabouts are unknown. I fear it was his body that Dalet called Julian into. Something similar appears to have befallen the thief who despoiled Queen Andred’s tomb. Dalet used the ring to call Istvan back into the thief’s body.”

  I blinked at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been asking questions. Those who serve me have been finding the answers. You are here to help us put the questions and the answers together to benefit Julian.” The prince-bishop returned to the circle marked on the floor. “We require your help in the actual casting.”

  “But Maspero—”

  “You are the artist I am concerned with. No one but you.” The prince-bishop was firm.

  “You want me to destroy Maspero’s work to no purpose.”

  “Maspero’s work has been used against you and every other citizen of the empire. It has been used against nature itself. The only way to set this necromancy right is to destroy that which links Julian to his enslavers. Julian’s blood links him to the medal. To free him, the medal must be recast.”

  “Dalet has the medal that was cast with Julian’s blood. We can’t recast that one.”

  “Rigo’s art is greater by far than that of Dalet’s. She may keep the medal. Rigo will melt her spell with a greater spell of his own.”

  “Even if he could, it wouldn’t help. Julian is linked to the medal, but there’s more on the medal than the image of Julian. Look at the other side—look at Aravis. It isn’t just Julian’s blood that’s the link. It’s Julian himself. Maspero cast Julian and the city together.”

  “The arrangements have been made,” the prince-bishop declared. “You play your part. Rigo plays his. The work is vital. The moon won’t wait.”

  “Begin,” said Rigo.

  The air prickled with dry heat. The silence pressed in on me. Breathing became an effort. I remembered Tig’s warning about the furnace, and for a moment I feared that we were all about to be suffocated. Then I realized the prince-bishop and Rigo were breathing easily enough. My difficulty was all my own.

  Resigned, I hitched up the belt—the women at the baths had called it a cincture—of my sackcloth costume. If its draperies were anything to go by, the art of magic was a sedentary one. I just hoped I wouldn’t brush too close to the forge and find myself bursting into flame.

  I walked to the worktable. My breath came more easily as my resistance diminished. The tools were there, spread out before me. Among them was a bronze siege medal. My own medal was beside it, along with the clay mold prepared for the recasting. Rigo had added signs to the rim of the mold, symbols I could not read.

  I took up the medal Maspero had made. More valuable by far than the bronze that made it, the medal was Aravis itself on one side, Julian himself on the other.

  Rigo was chanting. The air in the chamber thickened, not just with heat and dryness this time but with a sense of shared purpose, of impatience.

  I slid the medal into the crucible. The crucible into the cradle that bore it safely into the heart of the furnace. Slowly, what Maspero had made returned to molten bronze.

  Did bronze have a memory? I thought it did. One cou
ld not cast and recast it indefinitely. What Maspero had bound, the furnace had set free. What could be made of it now was in Rigo’s hands.

  I tried my best. Concentration was the keystone of Rigo’s ritual. My attention was to be focused on the mold. I prepared it, closed my eyes, and waited for Rigo to intone the lines I was to respond to. On that cue, I would begin the pouring. Molten bronze would, with luck, again take the shape of the siege medal.

  Someone far away was knocking on a door. Stubbornly, steadily, the knocking went on. An intermittent thud, as of a booted foot kicking the door, joined the knocking.

  Concentration. I squeezed my eyes more tightly closed, let out my breath, and drew another deep lungful. Rigo chanted on unperturbed. Perhaps he didn’t hear the disturbance.

  The knocking continued. Voices, some muffled, some not, joined the racket. The knocking and kicking stopped, but the voices increased in volume. A new knock, closer, turned into a thunder of blows on the door to the chamber. Protests, more kicking, and I had a sudden icy certainty that I recognized the voice.

  “Here,” said Istvan. He stepped past the guards into the chamber. In his hands he held the votive crown I had last seen hanging among the offerings at St. Istvan’s in Dalager. As he held out the crown, I looked hard into his eyes. Whatever had befallen since I saw him last, nothing good had happened, nothing happy. He had fresh scars at wrist and jaw and temple, more punishment than any man still living should have suffered. Even under his chin, where a garrote might slice, there was a livid scar, a stark necklace. “Take it.” He pressed the offering into my hands.

  I took it clumsily. “What’s this for?”

  “Julian told me to bring it here. His link to the medal can’t be severed. It can only be overruled by a stronger tie. You must forge a link to the city for him.”

  I held up the votive crown. “This city.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Dalet know?”

  “He can hide nothing from her.”

  “Time is passing,” Rigo reminded us. “We cannot wait for next dark of the moon. You must complete the recasting. Finish this ritual, and then I will study the matter and construct a new ritual for the crown.”

  “Time is passing,” I said. I couldn’t spare a hand to adjust the belt again. “The furnace won’t stay hot forever. We can’t wait to work out a second ritual. I’m changing this one.”

  “These arrangements are carefully planned. I made all the calculations,” Rigo protested.

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes an artist has to wipe off the charcoal and do her own under-drawing.” I put the votive crown down beside the wax crown on my worktable. My belt slid perilously, but I caught it in time, yanked it tight and tied a fresh knot, then tugged briskly at the bunched fabric until I felt less likely to trip over my own hem. I rolled the sleeves back out of my way once and for all, then lifted the votive crown to my eye level. It gleamed in the lamplight, its delicate lines an echo of the familiar line of the city walls.

  Rigo broke my concentration with a touch on my wrist. Despite the heat in the chamber, his hand chilled me. “This is not for you to decide. I forbid you to change the ritual.”

  I looked at him, and Rigo’s eyes held mine. I could not look away. I heard the muted chime of steel as Istvan’s great sword left its scabbard, and then the blade was poised between Rigo and me.

  Istvan’s voice was deep and cold. “It is the king’s command.”

  Rigo let me go. I focused on the sword Istvan held. All the heat of the casting furnace could not warm that steel. Rigo stepped back. Istvan put the sword away, and I was free.

  Here was the votive crown, all Aravis, here in my hands. Here too was the work of Maspero, here in my hands. And here in my hands, held safely in the light, lay what was dearest to King Julian’s heart. The heart of his kingdom, the keystone of the Lidian empire, the city of Aravis.

  I set to work.

  SIXTEEN

  (In which I finish.)

  Rigo resumed his chant. I wasn’t listening with my full attention. I don’t think I missed any cues. He seemed to be improvising, temporizing to allow my work to go forward before he moved to the next stage in the ritual.

  I had to call for more materials, but my orders were obeyed with speed and accuracy. It took time to make the clay mold for the crown, more time still to allow it to dry. Still Rigo chanted, softly but steadily, as if by keeping his ritual going, he could hold his place in time. Hours passed.

  Somewhere the moon set and rose again.

  The votive crown was gold over base metal. I decreed that four ounces of bronze be added—lest Maspero’s siege medal had been melted down in vain. I slid my own siege medal into the crucible. How could I hesitate to sacrifice my own work when I had to be so prodigal with Maspero’s? When the time was right, I set the votive crown into the crucible. Let it all blend, I thought, base metal and noble, crows and doves alike.

  Maspero symbolized fire with his salamander. His birds represented the element of air. The neat arc of the Lida represented water. The element of earth was present in the city of Aravis, captured in the shape of the votive crown. In recasting the votive crown, we remade the link between the city and Julian.

  In a husking whisper, Rigo chanted his ritual. I recognized a cue.

  As if no more than a moment had passed, I said my few words and the rite went on. I poured the molten metal and the rite went on.

  The mold held, and the blazing sun of the metal began to fade from golden to orange to red to a sullen pulsing darkness. In a murmur, Rigo’s ritual continued.

  Somewhere time was passing, but it seemed to hang motionless around us, caught by Rigo’s art and slowed until it seemed not to move at all. Only the gradual death of the fire in the furnace promised us that our work would come eventually to an end. The casting cooled as the furnace did.

  Would I cool, I wondered? When I was as old as Rigo and the prince-bishop, would I be moving toward the grave? Would that darkness approach as inexorably as the darkness that had swallowed the brightness of my molten metal? What lay beyond the darkness? I hoped for peaceful rest. May my eternal repose be unmolested by wayward librarians turned necromancer.

  Rest seemed impossible. I could hardly remember my last sleep. More remote still was the memory of my last meal. I was glad I had no more of the ritual to do than stand at my worktable and wait for the casting to cool. It was all I was good for.

  Our great work cooled at last. The mold came away reluctantly. Within lay the new crown, dull in comparison with the original. I finished the piece, burnishing it here and there, taking pains despite the palpable impatience of Rigo and the prince-bishop. I was well pleased with my labors. All pride, I set my mark upon the new crown. Hail Rosamer me fecit, that mark meant. Hail Rosamer made me. When I could do no more, I set the crown forth on the worktable.

  “There,” I said. “That’s all I can do.”

  Rigo took up the crown and crossed the intricate circle he’d made in the center of the room to present it to the prince-bishop. The final portion of the ritual was nearly inaudible, so hoarse had he grown. At last he stood motionless, eyes closed, arms at his side. “It is finished,” he murmured.

  The prickling warmth of the room abated slightly. As if a door had opened somewhere, the currents of air shifted, and every light in the room wavered. Then the lights steadied. The prince-bishop held the crown to his chest and allowed himself to smile at me. “Well done.” I managed to smile back. “Yes.”

  “Not before time.” He glanced at Rigo, as if for permission, and then stepped outside the chalk circle. As he left the chamber, his retinue fell into step behind him.

  Rigo watched him go. Without a word he set about cleaning up the mess we had made of the place during the ritual.

  Gathering up my tools, I started to help. It was the perfect task for me in that moment. My mind raced even as my body protested any effort. I could not be still, yet in my fatigue any but the simplest chore was beyond me. Weariness
made me clumsy, my eyes burned with strain, and still my thoughts chased themselves tirelessly. I had destroyed work from Maspero’s own hand, work of surpassing merit. Yet from that work I had created something new.

  Maspero’s crown, modeled after Julian’s city, had remade itself through my hands. Scalding metal had run easily for me, as easily as water runs cold and clear in a brook. The art in the work had seemed to move with equal ease, the way a fish darts along a brook, mindful of the currents but free within the world of the stream.

  I had done all I could to make the work whole and sound and worthy. As sometimes happens, something compensatory had occurred in that timeless space of creation, and the act of making changed something in me. I was not the same person after Rigo’s ritual as before. Not quite the same, for I could never forget the joy I took at the skill in my hands, the leap of art in the work, the soundness and the worthiness, the meaning of it all.

  This was what I was for, the way a spoon is made for soup. I was made to make such things and I would never be whole without such work to do.

  Hail Rosamer me fecit, said my mark. Hail Rosamer made me. Yet it held true the other way too, I made Hail Rosamer. The crown created me as much as I created it. How could I look on that crown and doubt that I had something to offer the world?

  “Did the spell work?” I asked Rigo. “I had to change things. Could you keep up with me?”

  Rigo smiled. “It was a pleasant challenge. I enjoy playing music much the same way. My flute and yours changed off melody and counterpoint, but we worked together harmoniously.”

  “When will you know if the spell works?”

  “I know it works because we were able to complete the ritual. Ceremonies of this kind are interrupted most unpleasantly when they fail.”

  “When will you know Julian is free?”

  “Time will tell.” Rigo touched my arm and gestured.

  I realized that Ludovic Nallaneen was beckoning me from the door. It was time to leave. I gathered my things and joined him. I didn’t know where we were going, but Ludo seemed to. I smiled at Rigo. I smiled at Ludovic and Tig. “Did you see it?” I asked. “Did you see what I made?”