Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Smoke hung heavy in the evening damp. Women carrying baskets of dried fish, turnips, or reeds bumped shoulders in the crowded lanes. Men shoved and jostled to get to the few shopkeepers still open for business—a Syan oil seller, a chandler whose candles hung from horizontal rods in his stall like rows of teeth.

  Many in the crowd wore livery—some crimson and silver like the pennants that flew from the castle, some in colors I didn’t recognize. A disturbing number wore badges of black and scarlet, the colors of the Pureblood Registry. In twos or threes they stood at corners, or strolled purposefully through the crowds examining faces.

  The Marshal had charged me to report to Damon by the twelfth day from his order. But in no way was I walking into Damon’s arms, not until I knew more. I needed to find Bastien.

  Brittle with nerves, I kept moving, not hunched or furtive or gawking like a newcomer. But as I slowed at a branching lane, the press of servants and householders surged sidewise like a river current flowing around a rock. A braying mule and its brawny master pressed me against a rough stone wall, one or the other of them trampling on my sore feet.

  “Damnation, you clumsy oaf!” I shoved the beast aside and was ready to do the same to its master, when a party of twenty or more purebloods strode up the lane. They were not a family group, but elders, men and women each with distinct regalia. Bundled in fur-lined cloaks and elaborate half masks, surrounded by a ring of attendants and linkboys, they seemed oblivious to the crush their passing caused. Of course they were not. They expected it. Believed the gods had ordained it. But I knew they were wrong.

  The bawling mule drew the notice of a black-and-scarlet-liveried attendant. The attendant—pureblood, too, from his mask—slowed and squinted in my direction. I quickly averted my eyes like everyone else.

  Attend, Greenshank! The echoes of Inek’s teaching reprimanded me. No matter how tired you are, no matter how fraught your emotions, know it is the small things that will defeat you. The blister on your foot. A misplaced mark on a map.

  Failure to drop my eyes could have me arrested and whipped. And not with the ultimately merciful Order lash, but one that would force me to puke out my every secret.

  When the pressure of the crowd relented, I fled into the darkening streets. By the time I reached the market, the stalls were shuttered, only a few people abroad in the expanse. How did one recognize a sop-house?

  A thickset young man with a tidy beard strolled across the leaf-strewn pavement just in front of me, a meat pie in his hand. He’d a jaunty air and was dressed like a clerk, far cleaner than I.

  I stepped into his path, dipped a knee, and touched my forehead in deference. “Pardon, goodman. I hear this market has places the likes of me might have a bath for the cheap. I be just come from my da’s cot up the north coast to meet a girl he’s matched me with. Oughta be clean.”

  “Alas for us vigorous men, the divine Arrosa’s temple is closed down.” He leaned in close and winked. “A fellow could have a holy wash and a divine tug in those precincts for naught but a prayer! Sop-houses will cost ye a copper for a tub and a tankard. Extra if you want a clean towel or soft hands to scrub you.”

  “Where would I find a place like that? Decent . . . I mean clean.”

  He grinned, displaying a mouthful of large brown teeth. “I could show you my favorites. Share a mug with you . . .”

  According to my friendly informant—Jochen the Cob, he called himself, as he was “short, thick-legged, and hairy, but quite reliable”—the Gull had better ale than the Nag’s Head and runners who could fetch almost any delicacy for a good price. The Nag’s Head had prettier girls and the town’s best piper. Unsure of which Bastien would choose, I decided to try the Gull first. The trick would be getting rid of Jochen.

  A touch of my bracelet and a spit of magic before I grasped his wrist in thanks for his direction soon had his gut rumbling noisily. About the time we reached the tight, dark alley that hosted a litter of pigeon bones and the Gull, poor Jochen had to apologize and run for the deeper shadows. His forlorn retching bruised my conscience.

  The Gull’s door opened to a blast of heat, smoky lamplight, and two men wrestling to the ratting of a tabor. Perhaps twenty onlookers crowded around the wrestlers, exchanging cheers and jeers with equally good humor. I couldn’t tell if Bastien was among them.

  Pitchers and mugs stood on a plank laid across three casks. In the wall behind the plank, a half door whopped in and out as a thin man with long, pale, wet hair stepped out. He called for mead before dropping onto a stool. He looked more than a little nogged already.

  “What’s your pleasure? Bath? Ale? Both?” A flushed young woman with hair flying every which way paused in her mission to deliver two overflowing mugs. Her sooty eyes took my measure. “We’ve a mutton pottage in the kettle. And there’ll be dancing when Thill and Pescar finish their nightly walloping.”

  “That last,” I said. “The soup, I mean. And ale.” The bath beckoned more than all, but it wouldn’t feed magic. Nor did the idea of being naked behind that free-swinging door sit easy. By now Damon would know his net hadn’t caught me. It was Bastien and information I needed most.

  “Find a stool and I’ll bring it,” said the tap girl. “I’m Fycha.”

  I set up in a corner where the lamps wouldn’t shine so bright on my naked face. The harried Fycha brought me a bowl of watery broth. Two chunks of carrot and a wedge of onion floated in it, and a sheep might once have walked close to the pot. No matter. My belly welcomed the warmth, along with the fresh, strong ale.

  Though I hoped to hear gossip of the pureblood murder, the hooting crowd silenced all other conversation. I’d give Bastien an hour, then try the Nag’s Head.

  The wrestling match ended with both men insensible. Their audience dispersed, settling at two long tables or other upended barrels such as the one that held my bowl and mug. The pock-faced drummer dropped his tabor in favor of a pipe and began to play untunefully. Fycha asked me and three other customers to carry the wrestlers out and drop them in the alley. I obliged. We appeared to be the only ones sober.

  No sooner had Fycha refilled my mug as payment for the drunk-hauling than a smallish man wreathed in steam pushed through the half door from the bathing room. Bek, the surgeon.

  One might have thought he’d been in the wrestling match. His face was bruised and the back of one of his hands was bleeding. But he seemed well enough. At least his hands weren’t trembling this night. One eyebrow ticked upward when he spotted me.

  “I’d hoped for mead and conversation, fair Fycha,” he said, lifting a cloak from a hook, “but I’ve lingered in your fine bath too late. A rotted tooth awaits my skills elsewhere.”

  Inexplicably annoyed, I swallowed the last of my ale, dropped a coin on the table, and strolled to the door. My nod to Fycha was ignored. The tap girl studied Bek as she’d not any other customer. “We’ll see you again tomorrow eve, surgeon?”

  “Like as not,” he said. “I’ve taken a special fondness for the Gull.”

  It seemed an hour until the surgeon followed me out, carrying a small lantern. He’d wrapped a kerchief about his bleeding hand and seemed in no hurry.

  “Well met, man of many names.” He started down the alley, but I grabbed him.

  “Why are you here?” I pressed him hard to the brick wall. “Where is the coroner?”

  “Elsewhere. He thought better of being seen regularly in so public a house. Scratch a brick of this town and it bleeds spies. Didn’t take us a day to figure that one out.”

  “Is my sister safe?”

  “Aye,” he said, his gaze cool. “She got a message to us yestermorn saying she’s with that important person she mentioned, and you were to stay out of sight. That’s all we know. Had a rough journey, did you?”

  “And what of the others?”

  “Most of Hercule’s people chose to head for Tavarre, which is bi
gger and friendlier to their kind. Some have kin there. But Hercule and a handful stayed, as he wanted to be of service to you should you ever show up—which the coroner and I had doubts about when the glowing lady stayed mute as a marble pillar on the journey. Shouldn’t we be getting on with our business?”

  I let Bek go as abruptly as I’d taken him, elsewise I would have added more bruising to his hollowed cheeks. Which made no sense. The surgeon had been nothing but help.

  Rage hovered just beneath my skin. Impatience, frustration, fear . . . all could trigger it. Drawing a deep breath, I summoned the discipline that had saved my life ever and again. I could not afford mistakes.

  “Looks as if you had your own wrestling match,” I said, indicating his face and hand.

  “Aye,” he said, “I did.” And pointed the way we were to go.

  We took a short circular route through the web of streets, stopping at every turn to ensure we weren’t being followed. It wouldn’t have surprised me had we ended back at the Gull. But this alley was even narrower and nastier than the first. A wooden shed nestled at its farthest end, its entrance closed only by a rag curtain.

  I lagged behind, fingers on my bracelets, as Bek rapped three times on the wall, paused, and then twice more. Drawing the curtain aside, he motioned me in.

  Three walls and a plank roof formed the shed. The back side was a tiny yard open to the sky, bounded by houses crammed so close together a man could scarce squeeze between. Bastien sat on a plank bench under the roof, sucking on a Ciceron smoking pipe, unsheathed sword close to hand. The smell of his pipe weed could not disguise that goats, donkey, geese, or perhaps all together had occupied the shed not so long past.

  Bek hung the lantern beside the doorway and shuttered it. Bastien’s pipe was a pulsing gleam.

  A hostile silence hung about him like a shield.

  “I’m glad to hear you’re all safe,” I said, curious.

  “Did you do this pureblood murder?” Bastien blurted, before I could choose where to sit. “An arrow through his eye.”

  “Gods, no! Though I’m thinking someone wanted it to seem that way . . .” I told him of the poison dart and the goat girl, the broken bow and the man I’d seen shackled at Cavillor’s gates.

  “Aye, it was surely Fallon warned you,” he said, cooler. “But why in such a roundabout way?”

  “That’s plagued me all day,” I said. “Maybe someone else had to do it for him; he’d assume I’d never trust a stranger. Maybe he had some other mission. Damnation, maybe he paid the goat girl to do it once he shot the dart. It’s no matter. It’s what’s next I need to be worrying about. And I think . . .” I didn’t like the notion that had come to me.

  “Surgeon Bek, will you leave us alone for the while?” I’d been far too free speaking of dangerous matters to Bastien, Juli, Siever. “It’s for your safety.”

  “No tears. I’ll watch.” Bek’s shuffling steps faded.

  “Bek’s a good man, Lucian. He’s saved my life a number of times.”

  “Then you don’t want him to hear these things.”

  I shoved Bastien’s feet off his bench and sat beside him, so even someone standing in the open yard could not hear us.

  “Back in the marshes, I told you I thought Damon was aiming for the throne as well as the Registry,” I said. “I believe it even more firmly now. . . .” I told Bastien of the Marshal and how my perceptions of him had changed from my training to his partnership with Damon to our last interview. “. . . so am I mad to think the man who destroyed my memory of my past is trustworthy? He claims to believe in Damon’s purposes. That could mean simply that he wants Damon to make him king. But if he’s true, and now something’s changed so that Damon is setting me up to be a murderer, shouldn’t I warn him that Damon could be planning to betray him as well? All I have to do is infuse this token with a little magic and have him meet me.”

  “I think you’re a blazing lunatic!” Bastien’s clipped whisper scoured me. “You and the rest of these knights or whatever you are. Maybe every cursed pureblood. You’ve got my blood so cold, I don’t know as I’ll ever get warm again. You’re talking about treason. Men have their bowels cut out of them and set afire for such a crime. And what the jolly shite does it have to do with your magic? The blackmail using your portraits I understand, but this he’s got a use for me business? You should take your sister and run as fast and far away as you can. And I’ll do the same, but in a different direction. You don’t owe the Registry anything. You don’t owe these princes . . . the kingdom . . . anything that’s worth putting such magic as yours in the hands of villains who see themselves as gods. They’ve already killed your family. Stolen your life . . .”

  He paused, unfinished. Even in the dark his gaze burned my face.

  “. . . but as you’ll never in this cursed world do such an intelligent thing, here’s what I propose. Set up your meeting with this Marshal. But I’ll go instead of you, stay out of sight, see what he does. If all’s well, he’ll leave, imagining you’re delayed, and you can set a new one.”

  “Tempting, but no. I’ll meet him. You watch. If something happens to me . . . give it a few days. If you don’t hear anything more from me or Juli, get back to the Gouvron Estuary. Persuade Hercule to go with you. I’ll wager he can hang a bit of red fire in the air on and off three times every hour, until an old boatman shows up. His name will be Fix. Be sure, he’ll sound fierce—and he is. But tell him everything I’ve told you. Everything you saw. He knows about you, about the plots, about everything.”

  “And what of the Xanch—?”

  “Ssss.” I laid a hand on Bastien’s knee. What was it? A sound, a scent, a shifting of the air? Likely it was Bek. But it had seemed . . .

  Magic infusing a large spell structure whispered cold, like falling snow.

  “Get out,” I breathed in Bastien’s ear. “Silent. Fast.”

  I shoved him off the bench toward the beast yard and stepped through the leather curtain into the alley, just in time to touch my bracelet, raise a shield of magic, and absorb the firebolt that would have slammed shed and the two of us into the back wall of the yard.

  I fell . . . forever it seemed before I slammed into the ground. At some great distance, as if I looked up from the bottom of a well, stood Damon and at least twenty men clad in black and scarlet, bristling weapons like great hedgehogs. As sight collapsed, words drifted down on me like falling leaves: “Lucian de Remeni-Masson, in the name of the Pureblood Registry, I arrest you for the crime of murder of the gods’ chosen.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “On your feet, Remeni.” The terse command issued from the last voice I wished to hear.

  “Curator Damon. Was on my way—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. On your way to dally with an ordinary woman in a pigsty! It’s not even a violation of orders, as who would think to command a pureblood warrior in-mission to contain his bodily urges? Or to avoid besotted babbling to a twistmind procurer?”

  I squeezed eyes and lips tight. No more speaking. No more listening if I could help it, lest I discover I’d truly gone mad. Nothing made sense. I was alive, but lay prone on a very hard stone floor, and somehow the phrase very ugly death kept bobbing up in the dark behind my eyelids like a wayward boat on the demon tide.

  But the more I fought to stay insensible, the more Damon’s clipped annoyance cut through the fog like a honed blade.

  “Your orders were quite simple and clear,” he said. “Twelve days. Speak to no one. Wear no mark of the Order. Bring only your godforsaken bow. Yet you arrive without the bow and before deigning to report, you choose to spend an hour drinking and whoring. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? How stupid do you think I am?”

  Not stupid at all, save that he had the story all wrong. Dally with a woman? Twistmind procurer? Bek! The damnable, treacherous bastard. I should have seen it: the cut hand . . . the bruised face . . . t
he vanished tremors . . . A moment’s ecstasy and an hour’s pleasure wrought with self-inflicted pain and the enchanted nivat paste he’d likely bought with my life. And he knew of Xancheira and Juli. . . .

  To my astonishment, I was not bound. I drew my knees up under me and sat back on my heels, assembling my shredded wits. The cold, hard floor was rose-threaded marble. The curved walls were not iron, but polished stone hung with vividly colored tapestries. Damon, robed in dark red, paced in a tight circle around me, arms folded, his over-bright, disturbingly hungry eyes never leaving me.

  “I never imagined a crack in my cursed bow would gain me a reprieve from execution,” I said, making my accusation as sharp as his. “Perhaps I needed a bit of human solace before I gave myself up for gutting by Domé Canis-Ferenc. You made me believe you cared about Registry corruption, and now we’re back to secret executions?”

  Damon halted, disdainful.

  “Of course you’re not going to die. You gave me your submission. You agreed to let me guide you to our shared purpose. Discipline is your joy and your strength; how could I imagine you would abandon it so near our goal? You can thank that twistmind’s unholy need for getting our great ship back on course. In exchange, we’ve provided him a supply of extraordinarily potent paste. He’ll not be able to form a cogent thought before summer.”

  It was difficult to muster sympathy for the traitorous Bek. But he’d provided a story, perhaps a caution for Bastien’s sake.

  “I was attempting to find out whom I was supposed to have murdered. Harlots know what gossip’s worth hearing.”

  “You’ll learn everything soon enough. Today is the day of our triumph, Lucian.” Indeed Damon was cranked tighter than a crossbow.

  “Today?” I shifted my joints, which were giving me notice that I had lain on that cold marble unmoving for too many hours. “You have me wholly mystified. You seem to take especial delight in that.”