Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Sweat beaded on Pluvius’s brow. He was right to be afraid; every trainee spent his time at the bottom of the bay.

  “Where has he been these few days?”

  “He spent a great deal of the time crawling about the cellars. And foraging. Trying to catch you alone, I’d think, and find a way off-island. Your hours on the seaward wall—or wherever you’ve taken yourself during those hours—have likely frustrated him to his marrow. He thinks you don’t sleep.”

  Pluvius latched his gaze to mine and growled, not pleading, but demanding. He was confident he had information I wanted. Though Damon had named Pluvius an idiot, he had also named him Pluvius-the-not-so-much-a-fool-as-he-pretended. My portrait had shown Pluvius guarding a gate marked with Xancheira’s tree. He could have knowledge of that mystery, as well as Damon.

  “You didn’t question him yourself that night?”

  “No,” said Fix. “I let him think he’d played us. I hoped he’d help me discover the secrets gnawing at Evanide’s foundations.” The blue-masked face turned back to me. “Your secrets. Inek’s secrets, such as silver bracelets left for you, one sigil containing only one of two names. Secrets in our highest ranks. Discipline must bend from time to time lest it grow brittle, but of late, lapses have become a dangerous habit at every level.”

  Even Pluvius quieted at Fix’s menace. And both of them waited for me to break the silence.

  Fix had told me he was not bound to the Marshal. That might mean he was Damon’s man. But the more I saw, the less inclined I was to believe that.

  “I would hear what this curator has to say,” I said. “If you are what I named you—with all the implications of that office—and if you are your own man as you told me this morning, then I would be willing to question him in your presence. Once you’ve decided whether or not to drop him in the sea, I’ll answer your questions.”

  One side of Fix’s mouth curved upward beneath the dark mask. “You are a brassy whelp.”

  With a sharp pop, the scarf that silenced the curator split into scraps that drifted onto the ill-fitting mail shirt. My breath caught. Fix hadn’t even twitched a finger.

  “Spirits and demons!” Pluvius rubbed at his mouth with the back of his silkbound hand.

  He had aged a bit in the two years since the scene in the Registry prison. Unless he was fooling me as Fix apparently had, he was surely well into his eighth decade.

  “Must this blackguard stay with us, Lucian?” he said. Pompous, for a man yet bound and shackled. “My information is for you alone.”

  “He stays,” I said. “For now, at least, I am his brother, and he outranks me.”

  Fix perched on a stool to one side like a cat ready to pounce. The lamplight dimmed to a pool that encompassed Pluvius and me—and left him shadowed. But Fix hadn’t touched the lamp . . . or any kind of bracelet or token . . . which hollowed my chest a bit. What kind of power did the Order’s most formidable warrior bear?

  “He has no respect for an old man,” said Pluvius. “And my bones could use a softer seat and looser bonds. I couldn’t outrun that decrepit boatmaster, so I could hardly best either one of you. Wherever would I run?”

  “You’re not a simple old man,” I said. “An old villain, I think. A wily one. I wouldn’t trust you bound by twice this weight of chains.”

  Though intensely aware of Fix at my shoulder, I settled on the floor in front of the curator and gave him my attention.

  “You asked for Greenshank,” I said, “and that’s who sits before you. I no longer answer to that other name you speak or adhere to that man’s loyalties. If you know enough to ask for me by my current name, and to dress as an Order knight in order to weasel into this fortress, then you know something of our practices. How is that possible without Damon’s aid?”

  “A colleague, a noble personage—unlike the perfidious Damon—sent me here. This colleague was once Damon’s closest ally and so learned of this fortress.” His gaze flicked nervously to Fix. “Damon confided his connection to a mysterious knightly brotherhood and assured his loyal partner that the Order’s dedication to justice would ensure the success of their vision of reshaping pureblood power in Navronne.”

  Reshaping, not just purifying. What did that mean?

  “His ally believed sincerely in that vision. And then you came on the scene and changed everything.”

  “I.”

  “Lucian de Remeni-Masson. Yes.” His watery eyes squinted at me in a sly and probing way that made me happy for my mask. “You may not acknowledge that name, but it does not surprise you, and you recognize my own. If I’d not witnessed a bit of Damon’s skill, I’d never believe they could erase a person’s entire past. But you’ve regained yours, it seems. So you must surely recall all that happened in Montesard, your devotion to your grandsire and his to you, and how he brought you to me at the Registry, entrusting me with your first contract. You know that Vincente and I were close friends, longtime colleagues. . . .”

  “My memory has not been restored,” I said. “Curator Damon has chosen to share with me a memory of his own that revealed the Remeni name, my bent for portraiture, and how, with his assistance, my gift was perverted by his fellow curators—including you. That is the extent of my knowledge of Lucian de Remeni. If this grandsire contracted me to the Registry, then he must be my Head of Family, the same who consented to my presence here—a harsh and dangerous education to be mandated by one so devoted.”

  Fix’s curiosity burned on my left. Let him hear. Let Pluvius prove his honesty against those things Bastien had told me.

  “Listen to me, lad, your grandsire considered you the gods’ greatest gift to him—beyond his own prodigious talents, beyond his own children, parents, brothers, and his other grandchildren, all of whom he adored. By the gods, Vincente de Remeni served as King Eodward’s Royal Historian! But you were to be the work of his life—honorable, disciplined, talented beyond measure. . . .”

  My kinsman, Eodward’s Royal Historian? Despite mistrust, I was caught up, grasping at the image he sketched, willing it to feel familiar. And more than ever my own ignorance of the past gnawed at my certainties. Perhaps such a connection to Navronne’s seat of power could explain Damon’s choice of me for his scheme.

  “Tell me, Lucian, are you aware that you were born with a second bent?”

  This interview was very like running across the mudflats, dodging sinkholes. I sped through everything I knew—and Fix might know—to ensure I hadn’t mentioned the dual bents myself.

  “A second—”

  Pluvius pounced, gleeful. “Damon didn’t tell you that, did he?”

  “No.” Even in the relict-seeing, Damon never thought of my bent for history. “What difference would that make to anything? Second bents are excised in childhood.”

  “But yours were art and history,” said Pluvius, relishing his little triumph. “An ideal combination, supremely powerful if you could learn to manage them together. Think of the insights—investigating a historical artifact or ruin, while using your art to interpret, to discover more. Vincente allowed you to pursue both into your twenties. He got waivers for your Declaration of Bent—and planned to get a permanent—”

  “Whoa!” Fix was off his stool, a warning hand raised to his prisoner. “You have no leave to reveal Greenshank’s past. It’s not your decision to do so—nor his—nor even mine.”

  “No matter what kind of wharf thug you might be,” said Pluvius, sneering, “you’d be a fool to silence me. Lucian de Remeni will destroy your Order and everything it stands for if you prevent my telling. These walls can hold back the sea, but they cannot withstand the corruption Damon brings. It is already here and growing; I learned that from Lucian’s silver-haired commander. And be sure I laid no wicked enchantment on him, but only this same message I speak here. If Lucian could remember, he would tell you of my lackluster spellwork.”

  A leas
h of fire from out of nowhere circled Pluvius’s neck. “Speak only what is necessary to the warning,” said Fix, “else I’ll lay a wicked enchantment on you both. And be sure, I am a most competent wharf thug.”

  Pluvius choked and growled as foam spewed from his mouth—a silencing spell beloved of children. It wasn’t going to kill him.

  I inclined my back to Fix. “I shall keep my questions strictly contained to the matters of concern to Commander Inek.”

  “Waste no time.” Fix withdrew the leash, leaving a trail of gray smoke and a distinct odor of singed meat. Though I saw no evidence he’d actually burnt Pluvius, the old man’s bundled hands blotted furiously at his brow and neck.

  “Two mature bents lead inevitably to madness,” I said. “Was that why my Head of Family sent me here?” Would he admit that wasn’t possible?

  Pluvius snorted. “Vincente didn’t send you here. He indulged your talents, but that was not his mistake—his terrible, tragic mistake. At King Eodward’s behest, he went looking for the lost city of Xancheira. And he told First Curator Gramphier he was going to do it.”

  “King Eodward and Xancheira . . .” An entirely new connection that made a kind of sense. Besides its magic and sophisticated arts, Xancheira was renowned for its just law and reasoned governance. Eodward, the noble soldier, had worked to bring such to Navronne.

  Pluvius gave me no time to consider if or how that might redirect what I knew.

  “After three years of investigation, ostensibly with no result, Vincente abruptly dragged you back to Palinur and excised your bent for history. He claimed it was because of— Well, I can’t say.” He cast a hate-filled glance in Fix’s direction, as if the Defender might plant a fiery boot in his mouth at his first misstep. “But it seemed a mighty coincidence. Vincente contracted you to me at the Registry, so all could witness your reformation. But the excision didn’t hold.”

  Another link in the chain snapped into place. Morgan said my disgrace was for my dalliance with her. But this hinted that Registry secrets were more likely the cause.

  “If Damon showed you those most astonishing portraits of the six of us, then you saw the result of your two bents working in harmony. But the devil had taken an interest much earlier, when I, the fool, first showed him your drawings. Did you never wonder why you had to make copies of so many? Well, of course, you can’t recall, but Damon required a copy of every drawing you did. Though truly, it was the curators’ portraits made the danger insurmountable for those who keep Registry secrets—and thus for you and your family.”

  A folio of portraits to be used as blackmail, just as Fallon suggested, and a confirmation that the curators’ portraits had caused my family’s slaughter. Though it still didn’t explain why so many had to die. Was it to disconnect me from the past so Damon’s version would be my only truth?

  Yet Pluvius’s story was convincing—and its mesh with Bastien’s account made it dreadfully plausible. So much so that I had to remind myself of what else Bastien had told me. I had not suspected the risk of my work as I did it. I had not invited murder by flaunting my power or being careless of the danger.

  But the curator also hinted at a deeper mystery. Damon had told me he wanted my gift that could depict the sins people want to hide, but Fallon witnessed that I had already done that work. Damon also desired my righteous anger fed by the Registry’s slaughter of my family. But his only mention of Xancheira was as an exemplar of Registry corruption. The lost city was the mystery . . . the key. What evidence had Bastien buried for me?

  Pluvius was near quivering as he held his tongue, waiting for me to take in all this.

  “You said it was my grandfather’s investigation of Xancheira was the mistake. How is a lost city connected to my second bent or lack of it?”

  Pluvius pounced, smug as a seedsman pocketing a twistmind’s coin, knowing the customer must return again and again to feed his craving. “That is the question, isn’t it? For two centuries the Registry has hidden all knowledge of Xancheira and the terrible crime that destroyed it. Only the First Curator and his successor—Attis de Lares-Damon—are privy to those secrets. I suppose you recall something of Navron history. . . .”

  I dipped my head in agreement, letting it hide my surprise to hear of Damon’s rank. I’d thought of him as playing for power from a lower position.

  “Good,” he said. “The curators have worked hard to make sure naught’s left of Xancheira. And Vincente de Remeni worked hard to convince them that he learned nothing. But alongside his chastised grandson, Vincente brought secrets back from the north country, a chest filled with writings or magics that convinced him there was some great wound in the fabric of the world that only you could remedy.”

  “Because of my dual bents?”

  “That chest changed the course of your life . . .”

  Which did not answer my question.

  “. . . for my colleague, by a quirk of chance, encountered your grandsire as he was removing the chest from the Registry Archives to some new hiding place. He told her some of what he learned. She knew then that Damon had not told her everything.”

  “She. Your colleague is this woman curator, Pons?”

  Of all the six curators, Pons was the mystery. I didn’t know her sins, only that she’d not forced me to cover them.

  “Elaia Pons-Laterus is a determined woman,” said Pluvius, eager now, racing through his story. “She banished you to a necropolis, hoping to keep you from the curators’ notice. Unfortunately you wouldn’t stay hidden. So she made sure you came here—Damon’s chosen refuge—because it was truly the only place you would be safe. But she vowed to wake you from this sleep before Damon’s plans ripened.”

  All rang true. Damon had thought of Pons as diabolically ruthless and morally conflicted, a formidable intellect, and perfect for his plans.

  “Damon used her,” I said.

  “Just as he plans to use you. Just as he uses everyone. Vincente begged her to protect you. Heed me, Lucian. Sila Diaglou and her lunatics grow bolder by the day; Palinur flounders in famine and lawlessness. This devilish war approaches its climax, and at that same time will Damon’s scheming come to its fruition. Pons recruited me, her only trustworthy ally, to warn you.”

  “Warn me of what? What do you imagine is in this chest? What purpose does Damon have for me, and what wound in the world am I supposed to remedy?” Pluvius talked around everything that was important. Was he bringing information or seeking it? “How can one man possibly reshape pureblood power?”

  “You are being driven to your destruction and that of Navronne,” said Pluvius, eyeing the dark stillness that was Fix. “That’s all I know, but I can help you find out more. I’ve a fortress of my own near Casitille. Together we can determine how to help Pons overturn Damon and search for Vincente’s chest. Before you were spirited away, you and I set out to fetch it. Such a strange day. The two of us were attacked by . . . very odd strangers . . . who spoke of your magic destroying—”

  “Ssss.” Fix’s movement was but a ripple compared to the waves crashing on the quay and his hiss but a droplet in the slop of the sea beneath the docks. But Pluvius’s babbling fell silent and I popped to my feet. The lamplight flared a blinding silver as an invisible hand of iron shoved me into the deepest shadows in the back of the cottage, then dulled again as the door crashed open.

  “Curator Damon!” said Fix, who now looked entirely himself—unmasked, gray hair, hunchbacked and older than Pluvius.

  “I was just informed that you caught a most unusual fish from your docks a few nights ago,” said Damon. The always cool little curator was disheveled, out of breath, and furious.

  “Aye, we netted the sneaker again tonight,” said Fix. “And you’re just the one’s needed. This fellow claims he’s a Registry curator just like you. But he won’t speak to none but Greenshank, as if we allowed sneakers to speak to just anyone they might name
. That first night I locked up his boat and sent him off to Commander Inek, as was proper. And I’ve wondered since if Commander Inek’s rebounded enchantment might truly be a curse from this’n. And then tonight, what do I find but him creeping about the boathouse, as if to snatch old Dorye to get away. The Knight Defender’s spellwork caught him up. So I had a post guard drag him here, and notify the Marshal. Nary a word will he speak!”

  Pluvius could not decide where to look—at Damon, at Boatmaster Fix so suddenly present, or at every corner of the room where the warrior who’d bound him might have vanished. None of them glanced at the back corner of the barren little room where a blanket of lead held me motionless. I had the distinct sensation that bellow how I might, they wouldn’t hear me, either.

  “You’re not exactly like to me, are you, Pluvius?” Damon quickly settled into wintry composure. He strolled across the chamber to the old sorcerer and squatted in front of him.

  Pluvius jerked his head back. “Don’t touch me, devil! You, boatman, fetch that warrior who was here earlier. This is the curator who’s cursed your Knight Commander.”

  Damon rested his palm on the old man’s silkbound hands. “Clumsy and oafish, as always. Clever enough to see an advantage, but never quite thinking it through. And, honestly, damaging a Knight Commander of the Equites Cineré and threatening a valuable paratus . . .”

  “I didn’t harm the soldier. And I’d never harm Lucian. I’ve never done aught but for his good.”

  “I’ve shown our young artist my worst faults. Did you? Or did you describe your idea of protection—the future you’ve planned for him all these years?” Damon glanced up at Fix hovering nearby. “Tell me, boatmaster, what did you find in the sneaker’s boat? Something very much akin to these bonds, I’d wager. A spool of silk cord? Shackles?”

  Fix’s stillness deepened beneath the armor of his disguise. “Indeed. The bit of chain on his legs is his own. The silk, too, both of ’em tucked away in a bag in his boat. No need to use my own since I’d already stowed his in here. He’s safely bound, so you’d best move away from him now, curator. He’s the Order’s prisoner.”