by Carol Berg
He grinned hugely. “The Order lash is a brutal implement, but usually teaches what needs to be taught. The pain never lasts more than twelve hours, but molinara can provide a quicker recovery when needed. That’s a knights’ secret, you understand! You’ve collected several secrets beyond your rank of late.” He rummaged around in my clothes chest. “Stars of night, Greenshank, do you never wash your clothes?”
He dropped a rank-smelling shirt over my head. “You’ll have no visitors until sunrise tomorrow. If I didn’t know a thousand smarter ways to work it, I’d say you planned all this to give yourself the night for this mysterious venture.”
“I didn’t know about the”—I kicked at a crockery jar slopped with gray paste—“whatever this mess is. And I’d not have been able to accomplish this greasy pummeling on my own. Conall, I can’t thank—”
“You’ll do the same for another one day. Now, it’s half gone third hour. What time do you expect to have people at the boathouse?”
As I ignored residual twinges and shoved my arms into the shirt, I searched back through layers of pain and punishment, revelation, sea and storm to find the calculations I’d made. “Nine hours, maybe seven if I can get them moving quickly. I’m not sure how many I can bring at once, but if I don’t have to row the first crossing, I should have a second lot back by the time the boats are back. Though truly I’ve no idea of the tides, and the boat crews will need a breather. Fix can explain why I’m so uncertain of it all.”
“He’ll explain as he will. I trust him. He sent you sustenance.” From a leather sack he pulled a round packet the size of a plate and a small velvet bag.
The packet held an entire leek pie. I burst out laughing. “Pie feeds his power?”
“He said you’d need it after your meeting with the Disciplinarian. And that the other gift might help in case matters got difficult.”
I blessed the Defender for the food, the surest remedy against depletion. Indeed a quarter of the heavy, greasy, astonishingly delicious pie was gone by the time I got the knots closing the little bag untangled. One more bite crammed into my mouth and I spread the crimped velvet open and dumped out a thin, flexible silver band set with four small rubies. Awe halted me in mid-swallow. “Deunor’s holy fire . . .”
“Said he hadn’t enough magic left this morning to light his oven, so it was a good thing he’d made the pie last night while he was filling the gems.”
Almost any material could hold a worked spell. Metals like silver, bronze, and even steel could do so better than wood, cloth, or plants. Horn, ivory, or rare stones like jade or lapis were better—able to hold worked spells with enough magic bound into them to fuel a single working. But only gemstones could store pure magic itself—the power needed to feed a sorcerer’s bent or spellwork of his choosing. If Fix couldn’t stand at my shoulder to lend me his magic, as he’d done in the crypt, then he’d given me the next best thing—stored magic I could draw on at need.
I crimped the silver band midway up my right forearm, just above my own bracelet, and pulled my shirt sleeve over it. “How can I ever repay such a gift?”
“Honor his trust in you. The Order itself is the Defender’s warrant—his life’s work.”
“Tell him Damon’s play begins inside twelve days. And the Order will never be the same.”
The Marshal might or might not be Eodward’s heir, but if the Order was to put anyone on the throne or force the Three Hundred to do it, then our history and tradition were incomparably broken. Fix had to know.
“I’ll tell him more once tonight’s business is done.”
Conall nodded, solemn, then peered around the leather curtain and let it fall back. “One of Sheldrake’s tyros will relieve my man at the hour. You need to be gone by then. I’ll confirm that you’re not to be disturbed until dawn. Dalle cineré, Greenshank.”
He slipped out before I, my mouth full of pie, could return the blessing.
I emptied my clothes chest onto my pallet, then rearranged and covered the pile with the wool blanket. After gulping most of the water Conall had left me, I used the rest to rinse out my mask and clean my face of dried sweat and leek pie. My body reeked, but given a choice of a bath or the rest of the pie, I’d have chosen the pie. Sadly, I’d no time for either.
Only my dagger went with me. I needed no encumbrances. Tonight would be tricky enough. The afternoon light from the small high window made my pile of clothes look like a . . . pile of clothes, so I closed the shutters. Better.
Conall’s gray-clad tyro gripped his lance much too low and stood his watch several paces too far from my doorway. Cloaked and re-masked, boots in hand, I slipped out behind him and pelted silently along the barracks passage, down into the old fortress, and through labyrinthine ways to the crypt and the door to Xancheira.
• • •
Magic only . . . no history, no art . . . A shift of my shoulders did not entirely ease their lingering ache. The bronze latch and hinge were cool to my touch. Beyond the door and the Severing void is a ruined citadel, unusual in its triangular shape. . . .
Did the answer to the Severing lie in my grandsire’s Xancheiran chest and a starving man born two centuries ago? Was the Marshal a legitimate heir of Caedmon? More important, was he worthy of Caedmon’s throne?
Focus, Greenshank. . . . The passage must be precise. Consider the matching door to this one under your hands . . . the symbol of open hands shaped on its center . . . the smell of earth and root, smoky torches, and those terrible iron chambers. Juli recognized them as like to your Tower prison . . . your own soul recognized them. Lucian de Remeni’s horror still lives in you. . . .
Was that possible? Extraction of personal memories left knowledge, understanding, the power to recognize ideas and facts. But so much of memory was linked with emotion—like the virulent personal sickness I had felt after viewing my family’s slaughter, long before I knew who those victims were. Surely Lucian remained in me, alongside Greenshank.
I yanked my hands from the door. I’d thought this would be so easy. Consider the destination, invoke the power of my bents, and step through.
I sat for a moment, cross-legged, arms folded across my breast, fingers resting on my shoulders, and began to breathe. Once, when I was a tyro and woke on the cold hard floor of the Hall screaming with nightmares and excruciating headaches, someone had come in the dark and taught me this. I’d never known who. But the practice had kept me sane. With each breath, I erased a scrap of anxiety, curiosity, pain. . . .
Now, again, hands on hinge and latch. The matching door . . . my spark of a sister’s small hand . . . Signé’s scarred face, transformed by traces of humor and glints of curiosity . . . dust and straw and the long sloping passage to the well . . . the hum of beautiful old magic that drew water from the well to water gardens . . .
The latch yielded. I pushed open the heavy door and stepped through.
CHAPTER 32
The disembodied fall was more familiar than frightening. I instructed the body I could not feel to hold a breath, just in case I was wrong . . .
The smell hit first—old wood and straw—and then something heavy crashed on my head in the dark. Not old Dorye again!
But it was no wet squinch, and no storm waves doused my limbs. I hefted the wood frame and scrambled out from under through drifting dust and crumbling baskets. The abandoned storage shelves. Xancheira.
Breaking out in a grin, I ran, hands spread to guide me along the pitch-black passage. Where the passage ended at the turning to the well, I cast a weak magelight to illuminate the twisting ways. I should ask them to leave a lamp down here. Magelight used power and I needed to conserve every scrap.
A short time saw me to the citadel’s great atrium.
An older girl stood on a ladder removing turnips from a hanging net and tossing them to a boy below. Before I could introduce myself, the girl yelled, “Eurus, get the mistre
ss. Run!”
“I won’t hurt you. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” said the girl, perching her backside on the ladder step. “Your sister told everyone you’d come back. The mistress said that if any of us saw you, we should prevent you doing something stupid.”
“No stupidity,” I said, feeling inordinately good-humored. “I need my sister and the Wanderers to gather here right now. Time presses. Could you do that?”
“Where’s Lord Siever?” She poked her narrow chin at me.
“Yesterday he worked a spell for me,” I said, “a ball of blue light that hung above his hand and made me feel—”
“Delight!” she crowed. “I remember him doing that when I was small. He could juggle the balls and each one made you feel something different . . . but it’s been so long. . . . You saved him.”
“He’s yet very ill. But I’ve hope. Now please . . .”
She scrambled down the ladder and bolted.
I waited, trying not to lose my good humor in the snarl of anxieties. Every hour I spent here was seven for Conall and the others. Dally too long and they’d not get back to Evanide before dawn. Would two trips be enough? A hundred each time. And what of the twenty thousand? I needed to see Safia.
“Remeni-son!” Signé hurried through the great doors.
“Lord Siever’s alive,” I said, knowing her first question. “He’s safe. Eating. Not well, but stronger, so he says, and yesterday . . .” As I told of Siever’s spellwork, tears welled in Signé’s eyes, scarred and unscarred alike. She neither blotted them nor turned away. In no way did they diminish her.
“No news could be so welcome,” she said. “Siever is beloved of all in Xancheira, everyone’s brother, father, or son. So now you’ve come for your sister.”
“I’ll take all who’ll go,” I said. “Half to start. Then I’ll come straight back for the rest. We need to be fast.”
“Merro will bring them.” Suspicion narrowed her unscarred eye. Her scrutiny did not waver. “Why the hurry? Is it safe where you’ll take them?”
“The island hospice is now a military fortress. The men there are honorable, but very few know anything of Xancheira or my magic that brings me here. To see two hundred strangers arrive unexpectedly would cause no end of questions I’m not prepared to answer. But I’ve friends enlisted to get the Wanderers to the mainland and onward to a place of their choosing. Beyond that, I can guarantee nothing. The world is hard, more so even than when they left it.”
She retrieved a few of the turnips the boy Euros had spilled when I arrived and tossed them into the righted basket. “Food. Roads to travel. Determining their own fate. Better than here.”
“I’ve not given up on the rest of you. When I come back—in just a little while, I hope—I’d like to speak with you about that . . . and to Safia. She might tell me—”
“Luka!”
Sunlight burst through the doors to the outer courts. This time when my sister slammed into me, I knew better what to do. I pressed her head to my breast. “Juli. Serena.”
“I knew you’d come. Told them, but none believed you’d find a way. Celia scoffed you didn’t know how. And you sound as if you . . . ?” She squinted up at me.
“I’ve just learned a bit more.” I pulled back a little from her hope. “Naught else. So, will you go this time? Siever thanks you. He’s likely eating leek pie just now and practicing his magic.”
“Oh, such good news! And I’m ready any time . . . as long as they can come, too.” Her head indicated a tide of gray, brown, red, and glinting brass flowing into the citadel from a distant corner.
“Come close, please, and quickly,” I said, loud enough for all to hear. I shifted Juli to my side. “I’ll take half to start. The passage will be different than when you came here, but no one has to die to open the way.”
“’Tis surely the coroner’s pureblood,” said a rosy-cheeked young woman to those around as the crowd pooled about Juli and me. “Looked him in the eye once, when I poured him cider. Looked at the rest of him, too. He’s . . . bigger, but I’d know those cheekbones anywhere.”
Snickering broke out here and there.
I’d forgotten about the Cicerons knowing Bastien. One of these people worked for him. . . .
“Is the surgeon Bek here?” I said, scanning the crowd.
A slight man with deep-set eyes, gray-threaded hair, and ragged clothes stepped forward, a worn leather satchel in his hand. “So I’m allowed to speak to you now, pureblood?”
A good-humored quirk of his lips belied the snappish quip. He was likely forty or thereabouts, his speech educated, his eyes clear and intelligent. But the creviced landscape of his face and tremors in his hands bespoke years of decadence. Bastien had named Bek a twistmind, yet I doubted Xancheira had been able to provide much nivat to service his need. He was a strong man if he’d survived the lack.
“Speak as you wish,” I said. “Coroner Bastien will be pleased to see you. He feared you dead or conscripted.”
So many faces watching me, weathered, anxious, sullen. Hard-eyed women of every age, the younger kept protectively behind the elder. A few bold, suspicious youths. A few brawny, grizzled older men. Their fighters had died giving them time to get through the portal, Bastien had told me. Youngsters clung to the women’s skirts. I’d not expected so many children. More than a third of them. “Which is your headman?”
One of the older men stepped out, bearded jaw jutting high. His wiry gray braids were bound with faded ribbons, and brass earrings dangled from drooping lobes. “I’m Hercule.”
“Hercule.” I inclined my back. Not so much as to make a mockery. “For now, I go by the name Greenshank. Though some use my birth name in various forms”—I nodded to Juli, who grinned hugely—“it’s no longer familiar to me and . . . not safe to speak in the streets of Navronne.”
A ripple of surprise. Curiosity.
“My sister may have mentioned that my memory of my days at Caton is broken. I live a different life now. More humble, I think. If I gave any of you offense in those days, I ask pardon. I showed your elder and your former headman a way to open the portal in your commons house, believing, as they did, that this would be a refuge. You know more of the sad result than I.”
“Where is Demetreo?” called several at once. A man in the back bellowed, “What of Jadia?”
“You’ll see Coroner Bastien tonight. He’ll know.” He’d told me all left behind were dead. “I live on an island where you cannot stay, so you’ll need to trust me. Trust my magic. Trust my friends who are waiting with Bastien to take you back to the world you know—difficult and dangerous as it is. Nothing has changed in that regard since you left it. Will you go with me? What say, Hercule?”
“Where will your friends take us?” he said.
“You can choose. Into the northlands or to Ardra. To Palinur, if you want to go back there. No one lives in the hirudo, but the war is two years’ worse and the royal city ever vulnerable. The risks are likely worse than before. . . .”
Murmurs rose to babble about where might be better and who had relatives in what town. Some believed staying behind might be best after all.
I raised my hands, hoping to quiet them. “We’ve no time to argue. Coroner Bastien can give better advice. He’s lived in the world these past few years, as I have not.”
“How is it they have a choice of where to go?” Signé’s question silenced them as my speech hadn’t. “How will they travel to cities so distant?”
“I’ve a friend sworn to guide them safely to wherever they wish,” I said.
“A Registry friend or someone even worse?” she asked, reeking of suspicion.
“I no longer bear allegiance to the Registry. The friends who will get them off the island are sorcerers of many bloodlines who risk much to do this service. They will be masked like me and will not speak to yo
u. But underneath mask and silence, they are men like me and will do their best to keep you safe. Once off the island, you’ll be in marshlands where it would be unhealthy to stay. Coroner Bastien and another very old friend of mine . . . a most trustworthy person who knows hidden roads and forgotten paths . . . will take you onward.” I didn’t want to get into the matter of Morgan. Not here. “So will you go?”
Still they gabbled, even louder than before.
“I damned sure don’t want to stay here and starve,” said Bek the surgeon, loud enough to quell the talk. “Every one of us is weaker than a month ago, and we’re eating the provender Lady Signé’s people need to stay alive. I’d as soon go back to the starvation I know of as kill good folk who took us in.”
“None of us got sick yet,” shouted someone in the crowd. “Maybe we won’t. We can work. Be of use.”
“My granny told of the burning city,” said a young woman, her skin already patchy and gray. “And how it was our duty to go back and save the ones lost. For my granny, I say we stay.”
“But right now, the saving for Signé and her people is for us to leave,” said Juli. “I’m going. My brother will do his best for you, the way Demetreo and Jadia and the others did. You need your families safe. And family has always meant everything to Luka—family and magic. He can bring you back later, if you want, when he comes to set the Xancheirans free. Because he wouldn’t be able to sleep easy ever again if he didn’t do that.”
“Enough,” I whispered. My hand found hers and squeezed it. “Hercule?”
The big man had listened carefully to every argument. “Them as want to stay, speak to the Lady Signé. If she says you’ll be of more use than what you eat, you can stay. But the rest of us go. To Palinur to start. It’s the place we know best. If it falls, we’re the ones will know how to survive and get ourselves somewhere better.”
“Good. Divide your people in two groups,” I said, trying to decide how best to manage the passage. “We’ve boats only for a hundred. And make sure you’ve two adults for every child. Families together, but partnered with other adults if they’ve more than one child. Everyone must be holding on to each other.”