Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Which was exactly what I wanted. Let him believe I had dangerous secrets. I’d rather tease information out of him than use force. As expected, neither sight nor sound of him caused a miraculous resurrection of memory.

  “So you’re familiar with pureblood customs,” I said. “I was told that might be the case.”

  Had I not been watching for it, I’d never have noticed the slight lift of his head and hardening of his shoulders. “Who told you that?”

  “Being a stranger in the city and tangled in a . . . family difficulty . . . I made discreet inquiries. I was told Necropolis Caton had a pureblood under contract.”

  “And so I do.” His inspection slid quickly from my mask to my hands and Morgan. “Family difficulties can be a bother. My pureblood taught me that right enough. Why are you here?”

  I held to the story that had popped into mind as Morgan and I crossed the field. His belief was not so important. I needed to learn.

  “A traveling companion was taken ill on the road and died. He must be buried according to his station, so that his family may offer prayers and libations when they learn of his end. But I cannot afford delay.” I peered into the murk beyond the brick tunnel. “Is there a priestess here? Or do you take care of everything from anointing to digging? Surely this pureblood doesn’t dig. . . .”

  He glanced behind me, in his turn, and then rested the tip of his blade in the dirt and folded his hands on the hilt. “Oh, I can see to a pureblood burial with proper rites. Where might we find this unfortunate friend? I take it he’s not in company with you right now, unless your maidservant carries him in her pocket.”

  I fidgeted with my rucksack. With my knife sheath. I bit my lip. If he thought he could learn something profitable, he might reveal enough that I could formulate useful questions. “Prove to me you know enough of our customs. If I’m satisfied, I’ll send my servant to have him brought. Naturally, I’ll pay well for proper attention and . . . discretion.”

  “Naturally. I’ve a decent room to lay him out, a few stone vaults that have space proper for elevated folk. I’ve a box of ysomar that looters haven’t found, so we can anoint his fingers that carried his magic, and a resourceful sexton who can likely find silk to wrap them. And if his own clothes happen to be fouled, she can find some to make do once he’s washed. It’s not likely she can find quality to suit you, but being travelers, you surely have extra. Mayhap his own. What else do you wish to know?”

  “Good. Those things are good.” Certainly he was no fool. I fidgeted a bit more. “But this pureblood . . . I wish to consult him before we fetch my poor friend. That would tell me more. Yes, I insist on seeing him.”

  A grin blossomed in the thatch of his beard. “That won’t be possible.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said naught of any pureblood being here. You see, I am a loyal servant of the king—whomever that might be at the moment—and his law. And I’ve been especially well trained not to run afoul of the Pureblood Registry. Just think: You might be an ordinary yourself, a felon teasing me with illicit magics you’ve bought in an alley.”

  “I’m certainly not. How dare you—?”

  “Or you could be yet another bothersome Registry inquisitor come to discover if I’ve by chance encountered my recondeur”—his right hand flew up as for an oath—“and as I’ve sworn up my granny’s sagging ass to the full count of her three-and-ninety years, I’ve neither seen a nose nor heard a spit of the snake-tongued blackguard. So you may take that back to your masters and leave me in peace with the dead.”

  “Your pureblood is named renegade?” Shock and dismay near choked me.

  “He vanished two years ago during the Great Siege. The Registry brought me notice that the cursed spelltwister had gone rogue after murdering one of their own, and that if he ever showed his nose in Palinur, anyone who listened to a word he said would be dead in the next hour. I told them I’d kill him myself if I ever ran across him.”

  Named murderer and a recondeur, though beside the second, the first was nothing. To run away from the responsibilities that came with the gift of magic was the most abject betrayal a pureblood could commit. Recondeurs condemned their kin to everlasting disgrace, and brought a death sentence to any ordinary who might possibly have aided, condoned, or merely failed to notice the escape. For themselves they reaped the most severe Registry punishments short of death, forbidden to marry, to sire children or bear them, to negotiate their own contracts, to walk free, to speak with other purebloods, to teach or study . . . everything a person might desire from life. They were forever subject to unrestricted contracts. Masters could confine them, work them to death without consequence.

  “I think he’s more likely dead,” said the man. “Three thousand citizens of Palinur died that first month of the siege, most in the first three days. More than half the people who labored in my yard here. But I never saw his body, and you can be damned sure I looked for it. Still, a Registry inquisitor comes nosing around here on and off, and I have to dispatch another complaint to the Tower, lest they forget I’m an aggrieved customer, owed for the unfulfilled contract.”

  He squinted into Morgan’s torchlight as if to see me better.

  “But you’re not one of them, are you? And I’m thinking you’d not wish me to file a complaint this time.” His gaze slid away yet again.

  “No . . . I’m no inquisitor.”

  If the Registry had declared me renegade, rather than dead or traveling or held out of contract by my family—whatever story my family and the Order had arranged—then every moment I took a breath outside Fortress Evanide was a dreadful danger. The Registry never stopped hunting recondeurs.

  Though my every muscle twitched, I had to stuff myself back inside my playacting—which at the moment was uncomfortably near truth. “And no, don’t contact anyone. Just . . . don’t.”

  Had I run before? Was that why he’d been allowed to chain me? Or had I run from his cruelty? And how could the Order think to make a knight of one so despicable as to abandon his every kinsman and acquaintance to disgrace or death? Unless the man’s aberrant magic—two bents grown to maturity—had driven him mad. The Order likely had ancient knowledge of how such an affliction might be amended.

  Learning about my history was rapidly losing its allure.

  “I am not a trusting soul.” His fingers flexed about the hilt of the sword. “Unless you’re a murdering devil like a number of your kind, willing to magic me to death right in front of this lady, who does not in the least fit my notion of a maidservant, much less the escort of a pureblood man who is strictly celibate until his family tells him whom he must marry”—he bowed mockingly in Morgan’s direction—“you’d best explain a bit more.”

  Morgan laid a hand on my arm. No words were needed to tell me of her growing anxiety. I was near drowning in it.

  This man was not at all what I expected. Dangerous and wily, I had no doubt. But perceptive. I welcomed the dancing shadows and the way the obscuré shoved his eyes away from my face. But I needed more information before we ran.

  “You’re correct that this lady is neither pureblood nor servant. Rather, I am her protector. I hoped that a sorcerer contracted to a necropolis might be willing to help me with certain matters. Private matters.”

  “Because he must be a sorcerer of poor talents or poor judgment to be contracted to this kind of place?” Scorn and bitterness tainted his tongue. “You believed he must be lax in your pureblood discipline, a ne’er-do-well who could be hoodwinked into doing some magic you need done without questioning. Or mayhap, a man of no honor, who could be paid to violate his contract.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “’Twould not be so foolish an assumption.” He glanced around, as if assessing what a stranger might make of his strange haunt. “You just could not be more wrong.”

  And there it was—a contradiction that s
et my blood racing and my head pounding its warning.

  “Then why would anyone believe he turned recondeur?”

  “That is a very long story.”

  All calculation fled, I seized the opportunity. “I’d be interested to hear.”

  The sword returned to its sheath, the man squatted beside his fire and pushed a battered pot closer to the pulsing coals. “Aye, you would. No doubt of it. But even the troublesome spelltwister himself would say it’s not your business, save perhaps as a warning not to get crossways with the Registry. Though you likely know that already, what with a dead pureblood out there waiting.”

  Fragments of history—gleaned from the Order, from this man, from Morgan—glittered in the dark like shards of the Marshal’s colored glass. Only no matter how I rearranged them, these made no sensible picture. Even if this fellow knew so much more than he was telling about his pureblood—about me—was it possible I would have told him about some encounter with Danae? Who knew what a madman might babble?

  I had to know.

  “Without the benefit of your pureblood’s magic . . .” I shrugged. “Truthfully, the man is not dead. Not yet. Only devilishly persistent.”

  Making a show of reluctance, I retrieved Morgan’s torch and took her arm. “We’d best be off before he finds where we’ve gone. Unless . . . Might my lady rest by your fire a few moments before we go? We’ve had a long journey already, and must make it to our refuge before dawn.”

  Surprise drove his wiry eyebrows upward, yielding quickly to calculation. “If you think to squeeze out a bit of my pureblood’s story, then be sure I’ll want to hear more of what use you thought to make of him. Tit for tat. Untimely death, whether actual or contemplated, holds a particular fascination for me.”

  “If my lady agrees.”

  I drew Morgan close. “I doubt he can help with Tuari. But he can tell me things. . . .”

  “I understand thy need,” she said softly into my shoulder. “But I fear to stay. Naari cannot long delay the archon.” The anxiety pouring from her body chilled my blood. But information given willing was always better.

  “Until the bells ring the next hour and then we go,” I said, shifting round to our host. “My name is Viridian.” He would take the giving as a measure of trust.

  “As you say.” He grinned and shrugged, as he filled a mug from his pot. “I am Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, paid by the Crown to investigate suspicious death. Sit, Domé Viridian and his lady. If you’ve a cup, you can share my posset. Alas, it’s but a bread posset and the bread was acorn bread, but ’tis made from sack, which makes up in potency what it lacks in spice.”

  A coroner . . . not just a gravedigger, but a Crown official of the same ilk as local magistrates. That likely explained his cleverness and his ambition to own a pureblood contract, though it said naught about what work a pureblood kept in chains might have done for him.

  I gave Morgan a hand to sit on the filthy cobbles next the fire, then retrieved the cup hanging from my belt. As I held it out to be filled, Coroner Bastien’s eyes remained fixed on the spot from where I’d taken it—the slight bulge where my cloak had fallen back over my knife sheath.

  “Might I see that dagger?” The half-strangled words were his first that lacked perfect composure. Though his mouth and chin were tight as a tabor, his extended hand shook a little.

  I passed it over, curious as to what had caught his interest.

  The knife’s only distinguishing mark was the white-on-black symbol of the Order on its hilt—the quiver and its five implements symbolizing magic, arms, discipline, memory, and justice. We did not expose the emblem gratuitously, but like the mask we wore to prevent recognition, we felt the value of its use outweighed the risks. Even in the frenzied confusion of combat, one could recognize a brother knight who carried the blazon on his weapon or his tabard. For any person not privy to Order secrets, the image would be quickly forgotten. It carried its own kind of obscuré.

  He examined the dagger carefully, holding it near the fire, then he looked up at me standing over him. The dagger slipped to the ground, and this time his gaze did not slide away.

  “It’s you! By all gods of grace and mercy, Lucian, what the devil is this playacting? Yet you’re so . . . changed . . . and this girl isn’t your—” His gaze dropped to Morgan, even as he took a great breath. “Holy Mother, this is the one you described to me, the girl who started this all back in Montesard. Is that where you’ve been—chasing a woman? I thought you dead, you bastard, or run off with the damnable Cicerons! You swore you’d be here to help on that dread morning”—his litany of astonishment and indignation drove him to his feet—“and when I found the mask Constance made you left on the slot gate, I knew you’d been close. Be sure, I cursed your name to the ends of the earth, for the Smith’s legions ran us over that morning like we were straw men, left half of us dead or dragged off to fight, and then Perryn’s devils swarmed through and took the rest. I prayed they took you, too, for thanks to your perfidy, it’s only Constance and me left, even my Garen taken for Perryn’s legion. . . .”

  Though every syllable crashed a battering ram between my eyes, I tried to piece together meaning. He knew of Montesard and Morgan, likely more than I did. How could I ever have told my contract master—one who kept me bound and in rags—of such indiscretion? Had he beaten it out of me?

  Yet if I was mad, then how could he be angry that I’d broken an oath to him? What oath would I possibly have offered an ordinary beyond the requirements of a contract? Yet clearly he had taken it as sworn. A madman’s ruse would never have fooled so perceptive a villain. And Cicerons . . . what would I have to do with a clan of roving pickthieves and sleight-of-hand artists?

  Keys to a lifetime were laid in front of me and no matter how deep I reached and twisted, not a door did any of them open. Great gods, he called me Lucian. What ordinary called a pureblood by his personal name?

  “. . . been two years, and it’s taken all I can do to keep the Registry at bay. That Pluvius has near driven me to murder with his threats and wheedling, as he’s so sure you’re alive and claims he can help you . . .”

  “Slow down,” I blurted. “Stop!”

  He stopped, hands on his hips, seething. Wary.

  “I know naught of any of these things—these people . . . oaths . . . dealings with Cicerons,” I said, pressing my hand to my forehead, near panting with the thunderous pain that increased with every attempt to understand. “Answer me one question: Why did you keep your pureblood in chains?”

  “What?” He stepped closer.

  Without conscious consent, my feet moved backward, as if his simple proximity might land the final blow to shatter my skull.

  “It is you,” he said. “Yes, your voice is something different—deeper, maybe. And you carry yourself . . . stronger. Like you finally know where your balls are kept. You may have your face covered, and I’ll wager my own balls you’ve put that lookaway magic that I can’t recall the name of on that mask. But I’d recognize that pureblood nose and the bearing of that stiff neck anywhere this side of divine Idrium. So what’s wrong with you?”

  Morgan shook my arm, and I pushed her hand away. Her fear and anxiety only worsened the growing agony of brain and bone.

  “Just answer the question,” I said, through gritted teeth. “I have to know. Before we speak another word. Why?”

  “Phhht.” Shaking his head, he blew a note of disgust. “Because you told me to, you stubborn prick. So’s you could abide by your damnable pureblood rules. So you could survive to use your magic. So you could keep the rest of us—those who stood between you and the Registry—safe.”

  Now it was my turn to stare, though my eyes were bleary and watering. Even so grotesque a masquerade as he described stirred no memory. But it spoke of truths I recognized about myself, and a few shards slid into place, presenting the
last image I could possibly have expected.

  “We were friends?”

  The furrows in his wide brow deepened as he forced his gaze to stay fixed to mine. “Wouldn’t say friends. You didn’t know much about friends. But partners. Aye, that.”

  “Lucian, this cannot wait.” Morgan near ground the muscle of my arm into the bone. “My kinsmen come. If this man cannot answer for thee, we must run, else the pain in thy head will soon be far worse than this. Tuari Archon can afflict the mind. His companions can break thee.”

  Worse and worse. Squeezing my eyes shut, lest the blaze of light and incomprehensible answers do the job beforetime, I nodded. “One more question, then, Bastien de Caton. Did I ever tell you anything about Danae with silver drawings on their skin or speak the word sanctuary alongside?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Has someone thrown you in a pit again?”

  Of course he thought me lunatic with such a question. “Please, I just need—”

  “Yeah. You told me some.”

  “Mighty Deunor’s grace!” Relief made porridge of my knees. “Would you be willing to bear witness to that—tell someone else whatever I told you? Just that. If so, I can promise you a sight to astonish your children’s children. And then after, we can sort out some of this mess.”

  “Well, that would be amazing on many counts.” He picked up my dagger he’d dropped by the fire and passed it back to me. “You found the Path, didn’t you? You’ve been there and it’s changed you. Is that what’s happened? And now— Is this the Registry come to question you? They’ll have you prisoner again before you can spit, and me dead besides.”

  I needed to understand all he spoke of, but Morgan’s urgency was squeezing the air from my lungs. “Not the Registry. This lady’s kin. They don’t care for people like you and me so much. But all will be well for you, if you but tell them the truth.” I glanced at Morgan.

  “Offer no violence, and my kin will not harm thee, good Bastien.”