Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Bastien had told me I’d eventually gone back to the Tower to see the altered portraits, and that a small matter of justice had come out of that visit. Was it the matter of Fallon’s dead sister?

  Curator Gramphier, the gaunt, aristocratic First of the Curators’ Council, had me remove a bloody dagger with Xancheira’s white tree on its hilt and blood on his hand. Together they exposed his complicity in the murder of anyone other than purebloods who attempted true magic—and anyone who came too close to revealing Registry secrets. Gramphier laughed as he told me these things, sneering as he spoke of murdering purebloods, entire bloodlines, and any Ciceron who crossed his path. He knew I’d not remember anything he told me.

  None of them mentioned the particular Registry secrets the white tree represented. Damon, whose body I occupied, who so freely exposed my identity, my unusual bent for portraiture, and the other curators’ crimes, never considered those secrets either. Yet the symbol itself gave me a clue. Xancheira. Were any of these villains aware there might be witnesses to the Registry’s guilt yet living?

  Lastly, Curator Albin, a ferocious toad-like man, insisted I alter a background landscape that exposed the subtle truth of his portrait—evidence of his connection to the Harrowers hired to slaughter a pureblood family. Again and again I refused, for I had recognized it as my own family’s murder. In his fury, he came near slicing off my hand. Perhaps it was the threat of mutilation that made me comply—or simply that I was too worn down to fight. Damon believed I’d reached the nadir of my confinement at that confrontation and expressed readiness to set his plan for me in motion. His thoughts did not reveal what that plan might be.

  According to Inek, a prominent pureblood had died for my family’s murder. Goddess Mother, let it be the loathsome Albin, who never in all those scenes bothered to tell why my family had to die.

  At the end of each session, Damon had handed me a wooden token that contained a splinter of silver, and using the identical one in his hand had erased my memory of the men, the room, the work, and the secrets. Each time the jailers chained me and dragged me, uncomprehending, back into the dark. Order memory magic. Sky Lord’s wrath!

  “I know you’re back, Lucian. Is the truth not what you wanted?”

  For a moment it seemed the emotionless voice was inside me instead of out, for it was so exactly the voice of the body I had occupied for these untold hours. Damon was exactly what he seemed.

  Flesh touched mine, pressing a soft square of linen into my palm. Then the cool glass of the eyewash cup. The smell of the eyeglim’s antidote seared my nostrils. The world I knew existed outside of me, while I yet dwelt in that other with a most unsettling conviction. I did not know everything yet.

  Damon could not possibly imagine I would judge him innocent just because he desired no alteration to his own portrait. By his own admission, he had approved my abasement. All because he wanted to grind me down, so he and the Order could rebuild me. And he no longer cared whether or not I knew it. What had changed?

  Inek’s loss, surely. And my obvious mistrust of the Marshal. Damon believed I had no one left to confide in, no one to trust. He wanted me angry and he wanted me alone. He had shown me Lucian, but he wanted only Greenshank. Why? Had the Archivist told him that I’d seen what had happened to my relict? Did he enjoy watching me live his past, knowing it was the closest thing to remembering I would ever have?

  The roar erupted from my chest like scalding tar from a siege wall. Yet it did not empty me. Anger and hatred boiled inside, so virulent it must surely leak through my pores and eat holes in the stone beneath my feet, all the way through Evanide’s rock to the Tormentor’s mighty forges.

  “Do you need a while to consider what you’ve witnessed?” he said, as if asking me which jerkin I might wish to purchase at a leather-worker’s stall.

  My hand launched the eyewash cup, which bounced off the hearthstone and clattered across the floor. “The other session. The burning house. That was my family!”

  And, of course, the truest horror here was not that single event, as awful, dreadful, and savage as it was.

  “You allowed it,” I snapped. “All of you. You knew what that animal had done. You let him force me to hide the flames of my own family’s burning lest he be exposed as a traitor to all purebloods, to Navronne, to the gods. The rest of you watched and chatted about nothing until he threatened to leave me useless for magic-working. But worried about your own sins, you dared not leave me incapable. And when I gave in, you scoured my memory of it and sent me back into the dark. All of you—the six most powerful purebloods in the world—are tainted with conspiracy and murder and false imprisonment, with decades of slaughter. And . . . great and holy gods . . . you masked a conspiracy to steal the throne of Navronne! What measure is there for such corruption?”

  “The Marshal reminded you that many worthy societies are built on faulty ground.”

  “The Pureblood Registry is not worthy!” His equanimity but threw more tinder on the fire scorching my gut.

  “So, what are you willing to do about that?”

  Something woke in me at this quiet goad. Something deep and huge, snarling, as dark and cold and unrelenting as this dreadful winter. The molten anger did not dissipate, but hardened into rock. This was the answer. This was about Damon’s purpose, the reason he wanted me at the Sitting of the Three Hundred.

  “What do you wish me to do about that, curator?”

  “For now, I want you to lend your mind to the first problem. Tell me how we reform the Registry.”

  “Magic is the gods’ divine gift to the world,” I said. “It must be nurtured and shared. It must remain independent of the politics of ordinaries. But the Pureblood Registry, formed to ensure exactly those things, was founded on slaughter, and it yet wallows in murder and political corruption. It must be purged. Cleansed. Reduced to ash and bone, as are we of the Order, and refitted into something worthy.” Even as this spewed from me, I knew it was no contrivance for Damon’s ear. I believed it heart and soul, in bone and sinew.

  Damon preened like a proud parent. “Exactly so. To make ready for this day, I have been forced to lie low, to cooperate as I plumbed the depths to which we have sunk. That has tainted me irretrievably, as you have suspected. And as I’ve shown you today, I’ve played a role in your own life’s dissolution, as well as its resurrection here at Evanide. I vow to you here that I seek no position of authority for myself. I have dedicated my life to guide this cleansing and then yield to those worthier than I to lead this new Registry forward. But to do what’s needed, I must have a right arm strong in magic and resolute in purpose, ready to do terrible deeds. I need a voice that carries the weight of righteous anger to persuade three hundred families and their thousand offshoots that this work must be done. I have consulted with your Marshal, with his predecessor, and with your most excellent Commander Inek to bring you to this day. You will be that arm and that voice.”

  Surely this was madness. “Why me? What is it you want me to do? Burn cities? Empty pureblood houses the way the Registry rousts Ciceron slums? To be your Harrower?”

  “You’ve seen the gift your art provides—to depict the sins all men and women wish to hide. In the coming months, I’ll ask the Archivist to unmute your bent. You are already disciplined and well trained, and soon you’ll own skills that only the Order can provide. Alongside others dedicated to returning Navronne to a righteous path, we shall devise our campaign.”

  Only that campaign was two years under way. He hadn’t needed my arm or my voice to leave purebloods in fear. Only the folio of my portraits. And he spoke of my investiture and skills I had yet to learn, but those could take a year or more, and the Sitting was two months hence. There was more to his plan.

  It took no time to decide how to answer. Even if I killed Damon now, nothing would change. These other demon gatzi would keep doing as they did, and I wouldn’t know who else was inv
olved at the Registry or in the Order. Fallon had judged Damon’s purpose a move of power as we had not seen since Caedmon’s Writ—a truce that had defined Navronne for almost two centuries. I believed him.

  Thus, begging forgiveness from the ghosts I would never know, and asking the gods to strike me down were I to become an arrogant monstrosity like this man before me, I straightened my back and faced the author of my dissolution. “I will not kneel to you, curator. The taint you bear I cannot forgive, and one day we shall meet in reckoning. But for now, your purpose is my own.”

  A terrifying truth.

  Then, knowing he would accept nothing less, I laid a fist on my breast in the Order’s binding submission, and lowered my eyes. “Command me.”

  PART III

  SHATTERED STARS

  CHAPTER 20

  Damon’s first command was to continue my training in all areas, with special attention to archery and memory magic. Though his insistence on archery was curious, not only was I better at it than swordwork, I preferred it. And I could not get enough of the memory work. Still, I chafed at this first tug of his leash. Not a magical leash, but certainly the will of a very powerful man.

  The choice to take up my old life was gone. So I must build my new life from the elements Damon had left me. Magic. Mystery. Deception. War. Justice. But I’d not let him define or shape those elements.

  My new commander informed me that the Marshal wished to see me. No surprise.

  • • •

  Wreathed in concern, the Marshal greeted me beside his great window—the center span that looked out on a misty midday. “I was told Commander Inek was attempting to attach a powerful memory enchantment to a silver bracelet when the spellwork rebounded so terribly. But no one can tell me to what purpose. Have you any idea what he might have been about?”

  “None, Knight Marshal. Will he recover?”

  “The damage from backlash is variable, but the Archivist is not sanguine. Ah, Greenshank, Inek’s loss would be immeasurable.”

  “Immeasurable,” I said.

  I hated the Marshal in that moment. How could he speak with such conviction, such sympathy, so believably, when he knew the truth? The water carrier who discovered Inek missing from Cormorant’s vigil would have reported to the Marshal. He would have spoken to the Archivist.

  “I am going to ask a great deal of you going forward, Greenshank, and of Knight Conall. Conall has his own changes to deal with, but he is mature beyond his rank and already familiar with Inek’s tyros. He will continue to drive the tyros toward their testing. Inek’s current squires will move into another knight commander’s cadre. Inek had no senior paratus save Cormorant, which leaves you, Dunlin, and Heron.”

  He faced me straight on, hands clasped at his back.

  “A mentor unfamiliar with a paratus’s training history makes an ineffective guide. Thus I shall take on the duty of personal reviews and counsel. But I’ve no time for close supervision. As First of your cadre, you will direct the other two in their day-to-day training, relying on the combat masters, the Archivist, and other tutors for skills beyond your knowledge. You will drive them hard, as Inek would wish and report to me daily at sixth hour of the evening watch beginning tomorrow. Is that clear?”

  I felt bad for Dunlin and Heron. It was laughable to think I could substitute for Inek in any way. “Of course, Knight Marshal. If this is what you think best.”

  “I do think it best, Greenshank, and yes, Curator Damon will be intimately involved in your development, as he has been these past months. I recognize your resentment of him. He sees it. Inek saw it, and shared it to a certain extent, I believe. Damon is an outsider, a Registry pureblood who is not subject to the disciplines of the Order.”

  The Marshal wandered from the window as he spoke, and spoke to his meaning as if he were arguing with someone else in the room. “I have committed my life to the Order, and I believe firmly and entirely in its goals and practices. But I also believe in what the curator said yesterday. A storm rages in Navronne. This war . . . these unworthy princes . . . this savage priestess and her followers. We cannot focus solely on small injustices. At some point, we must address the larger ones. I believe that time is upon us.”

  I could not argue. Though I hated agreeing with the two of them about anything, the smaller injustices were certainly symptoms of a disease that needed to be healed. I just believed that Damon himself—and likely this Marshal, too—were a part of that disease.

  “Is that all, Knight Marshal?”

  He pivoted sharply, and his eyes—an unusual gray-green, and hard and sharp as polished malachite—locked onto mine from his fine white mask.

  “Despite what I’ve said here, you must have a care, Greenshank.” His voice had dropped. “Curator Damon is quite single-minded. I think it is unfair to drive you forward blind when small things might illumine your choices. Remember: You do have choices, as does every member of the Order. I would tell you something in confidence.”

  Careful, Greenshank. This could so easily be a trap.

  “Curator Damon is not my Order commander,” I said. “I may share his purpose and his vision, but he is not privy to my soul. My dealings with Evanide’s Knight Marshal are not his business.”

  “As is proper.” If a masked face could beam, his certainly would. “Before accepting the recommendations of my predecessor to heed an outsider, I studied Damon’s history. Attis de Lares-Damon was a trainee here. As you can imagine, he was intelligent, skilled, and driven to excellence in all his endeavors. He reached the rank of paratus-exter, awaiting his final test and the same rites we celebrated yestereve. But the Marshal of those days refused to set a day for Damon’s investiture. He wrote in his journal that he could point to no flaw in Damon’s record, yet could not, in conscience, bring the man into our brotherhood. He believed Damon to be wanting in some indefinable way.

  “Damon, understandably, demanded a resolution. Even a Marshal’s doubts cannot deny a paratus-exter his final choice. But the Marshal can alter the terms of that choice, even to making it the paratus’s final test.

  “‘Ordinarily you would have to choose either to reclaim the memories of your past and leave Evanide or to abandon your past and embrace a future of service in the Order with use of all the skills you’ve learned here,’ he told Damon. ‘But for your final testing, I’ve changed those terms. Heed me carefully. I will invest you in our Order, allowing you to embrace our discipline of service. But I will also require you to accept your past, giving you a perspective no other knight possesses. The price of this enlarged perspective will be half the knowledge you have gained here. That will necessarily limit your service, but benefit our ultimate objectives, I think.’

  “Damon asked what was his other option. The Marshal said, ‘To fail. I will destroy your relict and send you back into the world without your past. But in respect for your accomplishments at reaching the rank of paratus-exter, I will allow you to retain your memory of the Order and your time here, though, as before, recalling only portions of the knowledge you’ve gained. Which do you choose?’”

  “Tell me, Greenshank. Which do you think Damon chose?”

  It took me a moment. I was so fervently hunting misdirection in this Marshal’s story I hadn’t comprehended the actual events and the strange, skewed choice. Reclaim his past life and join the Order, or relinquish both the past and his place here. But in either case, he would retain only a part of his Order skills.

  The answer that glared at me explained a great deal. About the oddity of a failed paratus who held knowledge of Order secrets. About a man who could unapologetically expose his partnership in savagery, while pursuing a righteous cleansing that would sweep him and those like him away. It explained a sorcerer who had seemingly mastered Order magic—some of the most complex known—and yet needed an Order knight shaped to his specifications to be his right arm. Fallon might be more experienced i
n war, but I had the magic.

  “He chose the second path,” I said. “He wanted neither his former life nor the disciplines of our brotherhood. And the Marshal gave him his wish.”

  The white hood dipped in confirmation. Damon had left the Order with heart and soul free of entanglement—no connection from his true life and unbound by the selfless discipline of Evanide’s brotherhood. But only a part of his Order training was intact. Which part?

  Perhaps more important, this Marshal had just given me an insight into his partner’s weakness. The Marshal had his own purposes, not entirely bound to Damon. As did Fallon. As did I.

  “Dalle cineré, Greenshank.” The Marshal’s abrupt dismissal caught me formulating questions. But there would be time enough for those. I would be speaking with him every day.

  “Dalle cineré, Knight Marshal.” From the ashes. In the past day, our benediction had taken on an entirely new meaning.

  • • •

  My proper destination upon leaving the Marshal’s chamber was to search out Dunlin and Heron and review their training schedule. But I was driven to a far more urgent errand.

  I’d once spent three nights in the fortress infirmary, out of my head with fever from an untended wound turned septic. As was drummed into me from all sides, I was fortunate to survive with the leg intact. The incident had resulted in my sole visit to the Disciplinarian and his whipping post. Never again had pride ruled sense in the matter of wounds or illness. Overwork and excessive risk were a more difficult balance, as both Inek and Morgan had pointed out so recently. I was determined to block out six hours of sleep before I stood my midnight watch. But first, the infirmary.