Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Twisting my neck to relieve the soreness revealed vertical slots spaced evenly around the ceiling vault—arrow loops. Arrows aimed in my direction protruded from at least three of them. Dared I imagine others might have firebolt spells trained this way as well? And I . . .

  “You’ve taken my bracelets.” And Fix’s too. Regrettable, but not exactly surprising. I wriggled my toes. The Marshal’s token remained in my boot.

  “You presented yourself combatively, and I wished no accidents. They’ll be returned to you in due time.”

  “So if I’m not to be executed and I’m clearly not to be your strong right arm until due time, then what?” I said, standing up slowly, hands visible to all who might be observing. “I am at your service, domé.”

  “If your petulance is properly satisfied, come. And quickly. The house will be stirring soon, and no one must see you. Put on your mask.”

  I did so. My spirit sighed with relief, which was wholly ludicrous. Damon had arrested me for murder of the gods’ chosen in front of some twenty witnesses. That was not anything that could be dismissed with apology or eradicated with explanation. Nor could I ignore the seven guards robed in black and gray who appeared behind us. They wore hoods, so I could not see if they wore full-face masks. But I’d wager so, and that their bows and blades were marked with the Order blazon. If I was to get out of this, I’d need to pick my time and place carefully.

  “I’m not exactly garbed for a lord’s house,” I said as I matched Damon’s brisk pace. I couldn’t get filthier than the ten days traveling had left me, but being blasted into the beast yard had left my cloak missing, and breeches and hose ripped. My hair was crusted with stinking mud, and twelve days growth of beard itched under my mask.

  “There will be a time for silks and velvets,” said Damon. “Later.”

  We left the circular chamber by way of a vaulted passage. Jewel-colored mosaics adorned the walls. Another time I would have stopped and looked closer, but Damon’s urgency drew me onward into a long gallery overlooking a hall of vast proportion.

  A colonnade of slender, close-set pillars screened observers from below; bronze grillwork screens had been built perpendicular to the colonnade to shield observers from one another. Perhaps halfway down the gallery, I dodged into one of these viewing alcoves to peer through the colonnade.

  The hall below displayed appropriate grandeur for a Sitting of the Three Hundred. Marble mantelpieces, carved in great elaborations of gods and beasts, soared three stories high at either end of the chamber. The Hearth of Memory at Evanide could have fit inside their cavernous maws. In between sat a great table in the shape of a horseshoe. At the focus of its arc, between its two long arms and clearly visible from every seat at the table—forty or fifty of them—was a simple square dais, bordered by wood rails at waist height.

  But my eye was captured by an exquisite mural of Kemen Sky Lord and Mother Samele that centered the high wall above the table. The brother and sister divinities were each engaged with a Danae partner, the sapphire, lapis, and indigo of their exquisite gards exactly as I knew them. Legend said those couplings birthed Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic, and Erdru, Lord of Vines. The artistry of that painting . . . the muscular vigor of its subjects . . . the lines and shading that revealed such passionate intimacy that my flesh and blood heated . . . could make anyone believe such tales.

  “Come along. Your aerie is a little farther.”

  As I followed Damon back to the open aisle of the gallery, my fingers glanced along the grillwork. His voice had sounded dead inside the alcove, and indeed subtle magics had been woven into the bronze screens. Those inside would not hear the comments from their neighbors, nor would their own be heard outside the space. A nice deterrent to spies.

  “Here is where you will view the proceedings.” Damon indicated an opening.

  That the viewing alcove selected for me had a gate to close it off from the open walkway did not surprise me. Nor did the circumstance that these screens were wrought of iron, not bronze. The gate bore locks of spellwork so intricate even a paratus of Evanide would require a significant time to undo them. What kind of madman was I to walk in?

  I halted. “Am I your prisoner, curator?”

  “No.” Yet seven hooded guards stood just beyond range of hearing. “You are my willing instrument. I need you to observe and learn—is that not what you desire? I also need you to remain silent, and refrain from any detectable trace of magic. Should any person down below have occasion to look up here I will have you bound and muted as befits a man accused of murder. Should we do that as a precaution?”

  “No.”

  I could not leave. Not here, on the brink of enlightenment. Damon himself was so near bursting that I knew he spoke true—this was the day, whether of triumph or ending or simple understanding. Serena Fortuna . . . the Law of the Everlasting . . . whatever it was that determined the course of human fate . . . had driven me to this moment. I was not mad. The divine gift lived in me in a form that had shaped terrible events and it was my duty to serve its call, both here and in Xancheira. Even if it meant stepping into a cage.

  Damon nodded, meeting my gaze, not with gloating, but with solemn understanding, as if he’d listened in on my argument. “I expect this session to last late into the night. Food and drink will be provided you. You will neither touch those who bring it nor speak nor expose your face to them. There is a slops jar for your use. This is not the Tower cellar. You are neither naked, nor stupefied by potions, nor subject to the other indignities of that prisoning. And no, I do not expect you to thank me for that. I accept responsibility for those conditions as I do for these. But your life will change today. One way or the other for the greater glory of Navronne . . .”

  He turned to go.

  But my patience was too much frayed. “Good gods, curator, just a hint. What are these proceedings?” My muddled reckoning said the Sitting was not to begin for twelve days yet.

  “Our trial. The Fifty are assembled to weigh judgment.”

  The gate slammed behind him and the lockspells settled into place.

  • • •

  The Fifty. The Fifty Judges, to be precise. Every year each of the three hundred original pureblood families designated one of their own to serve at the pleasure of the Registry to determine guilt or settle disputes in matters that involved more than one family. Most occasions required only one judge or three. But for the most serious adjudications, a random fifty would be chosen to hear arguments and witnesses.

  Not long after Damon’s departure, the judges arrived in solemn procession and took their places at the table. All wore robes the same blood-red as Damon’s. Hoods hid their faces. No one knew which fifty families were represented at any hearing or which member of a family was designated its judge in any particular year. Yet I did not doubt that Damon knew exactly who sat on those fifty stools. He would have left nothing to chance—not with the folio of my portraits in hand.

  It made sense that the Fifty would meet before a Sitting. The Three Hundred decided how pureblood society was to move forward in perilous times. But the Fifty had to lay the groundwork, determining what circumstances mandated change. Fallon had told me this Sitting was meant to address matters of corruption in the Pureblood Registry.

  A very large man swept through the door trailing wine-hued velvet robes. A wool-cart’s worth of black and gray hair was bound into ten fat braids. Kasen de Canis-Ferenc welcomed the noble judges to his demesne, and with a brief ceremony involving invocations, fragrant smokes, and a magical font of crimson and silver light, formally opened the Convocation of the Fifty. He paused for a moment, as if waiting for an invitation to stay. When all remained silent, he swept out, followed by quick-stepping attendants in crimson-and-silver livery.

  One judge rose from his seat at the end of the curved table and walked around to stand beside the small dais. “Heed me, worthy Judges, as I prese
nt to you a case I have assembled over more than twenty years, tragic violations of law and custom that reach from the deeps of history to our present day, that touch on human wickedness, on greed and murder that have sullied our divine gift, and held us back from the fullness of destiny the gods intend for us. . . .”

  Damon. He wandered as he spoke, sometimes drawing near the table, sometimes standing back and gesturing as he laid out a background of the perilous times. The everlasting winter. The ordinaries’ war. The scouring madness of the Harrowers.

  “. . . and how have we—the Registry, the children of Aurellia who’ve come to this wondrous land where the gods infuse our magic with majesty and brilliance—responded to these perils? We look the other way. We hide inside fortresses of riches, citing the Law that keeps us separate from the world of ordinaries. Where is the advancement that should demonstrate the gods’ favor? We preach of nurturing our gifts and sharing them impartially to better the world, but where is the magic? Where is the glory? Rather, behind our bastions of comfort and our prattling of duty, discipline, and distance, corruption festers. Centuries of corruption . . .”

  His voice and his body bespoke passion, compelling every eye and ear in that chamber to heed him. He told the story of Xancheira, much as the Marshal had told it to me. He did not speak of the Order, nor mention the poisonous secret of dual bents. But he told of the city’s death in a ring of fire, and the warriors who had never gone home from the shame of that day.

  Perched on a stool that had been left in the viewing alcove, I took in every word as he moved on to other history I’d never heard—of the extermination of other magic wielders, of settlements razed, of caravans bringing new Aurellian settlers attacked and the travelers massacred.

  “. . . our lives and fortunes built not on divine magic, but on blood. And what have we done for the world but foster corruption that reflects our own? Consider our own day. Three princes vie in savagery to replace a great king. And among our own? All here know the name of Remeni. Vincente, whose bent for history was so powerful he became King Eodward’s Royal Historian. Elaine de Remeni-Masson, whose glorious artworks grace these very halls . . .”

  His hand pointed to the painting of Kemen and Samele—my grandmother’s? My mother’s? Gods!

  “. . . of countless others whose work stands amid the greatest of our kind. And the last of them, Lucian the portraitist, the quiet, impeccably disciplined young artist, whose deft hand and incomparable magic produced portraits of almost every pureblood man, woman, and child in Navronne over the span of five years. Ah, yes, I see some of you squirm. No matter what is spoken of the man now, no matter rumor or innuendo, Lucian de Remeni-Masson’s portraits bore the glorious, undeniable aspect of divine truth in ways we have not seen in uncounted generations. And what did those portraits reveal?”

  Indeed, every one of the red-robed judges, whose stillness to that point might have been attention or boredom, shifted uneasily.

  “Corruption,” said Damon. “Aberrance deep, foul, poisonous . . .”

  And then Damon told the story of my great commission to paint the portraits of the six curators. Of the sudden and horrible savagery that destroyed my family not two days after the portraits’ completion, of the growing anger among the curators at certain truths those paintings exposed. He told of the rumors of my madness that circulated through the city, and a second fire that had “killed Lucian de Remeni’s young sister and six of their servants.”

  Juli. They’d set a fire to murder my sister and our servants—so they could blame it on me.

  Revulsion and outrage pulsed in my veins. Cut me and I would bleed murder.

  As he told of my imprisonment and how they forced me to alter the paintings, he displayed illusions that reflected the original and the altered works. They were true to every detail that I had witnessed in the relict-seeing.

  “With the authority given me by the Fifty, I have summoned the architects of this current corruption. Let them speak to these crimes. Bring in First Curator Gramphier. . . .”

  No matter my apprehension at my situation—locked in this cage, convinced of his duplicity—Damon’s skill awed me. While no match for the Marshal and his ability to inspire, the little curator had laid out his case against the Registry with impeccable precision.

  The First Curator of the Pureblood Registry was escorted into the hall and led to the railed dais by two men robed and hooded in gray. Gramphier’s posture spoke arrogance and disdain.

  “Three questions only, Curator. First, why did you wish the bloody dagger excised from your portrait?”

  “This is nonsense, Damon,” said Gramphier. “You know the answer very well. To protect the divine gift is a sacred duty that cannot be accomplished without bloodshed. But few wish to be confronted with ugly truth as they go about their lives. To display the harsh necessities of our calling in so public a way was not appropriate. Remeni was a madman, bound to—”

  “Answer only what you’re asked, First Curator, and heed your words. Perjury before the Fifty will see you dead before sunrise. And be sure, I can prove the truth or falsity of your answers. If the Fifty determine you innocent, no one beyond these walls will ever know what you’ve said. So, again. Why did you wish the bloody dagger removed?”

  “I approved executions necessary to maintain our proper role in the world.”

  Damon nodded. “Second question: Did you approve the plan to exterminate the Remeni and Masson bloodlines by whatever means came to hand?”

  Even so far above them as I was, I felt the heat of Gramphier’s hatred. “Yes, but—”

  “We are not interested in excuses or explanations. The last question: Was that decision precipitated by the revelations in Lucian de Remeni’s portraits of the six curators?”

  “What are you—?”

  Silver flashed from a ring on Damon’s hand. Gramphier choked on his words as if a knife had been planted in his throat.

  “Answer the question. Yes or no.”

  Another glint from Damon’s ring and Gramphier snarled. “Yes.”

  The livid Gramphier was dismissed, and a small, dapper man escorted to the dais, his gaze jerking between Damon and the judges. A twist in his spine left his head cocked to one side. This was Curator Scrutari-Consil, the man who had forged a will naming Prince Perryn as King Eodward’s chosen heir.

  Damon put a similar three questions to Scrutari. As with Gramphier, Scrutari affirmed his crimes.

  Never did Damon mention dual bents, nor did he link the Registry’s history of murder to the secret that halfbloods could pass on the gift of true sorcery by intermarriage with those so gifted. Every reference to the image of the white tree in the portraits was to the crime of burning Xancheira; none suggested that Xancheira had flourished, in part, through the richness of dual bents.

  To my astonishment the next witness was Pluvius. Disheveled but clean, subdued and possessed of a mind, he shuffled onto the witness’s dais, ducking his head before the formidable wall of faceless judges. When Damon stepped out from behind the table, Pluvius hissed.

  The escorts stepped up smartly, but Pluvius raised his hands, fingers spread to stay them.

  Three questions for Pluvius.

  “Did you devise the plan for Lucian de Remeni-Masson to be tormented into modifying the portraits?” Yes.

  “Did you devise private schemes to entice Lucian de Remeni into enslavement in your own house, intending to advance your fortune through blackmail?” Yes.

  “When and where did you last see Lucian de Remeni?” This one surprised me.

  “If this is the same year as when I traveled from Palinur, then I saw him not a month ago. He lives among a cadre of formidable warriors. I judged him damaged and violent.”

  “I did not ask for opinions.” But neither did Damon interrupt those opinions as he had with Gramphier.

  Spider feet prickled my spine. Wher
e was this leading? Everything Damon had presented was truth that fired my own blood, but he had arrested me in front of witnesses. . . .

  Pluvius, too, was escorted out. Damon faced the judges, hands pressed to his breast. “I am one of these infamous curators, as well,” he said. “I did not coerce Lucian de Remeni into altering my unflattering portrait, but that yields me no virtue. I aided my colleagues in their despicable cruelty. Only one of our six refused to take part.”

  The doors opened and a woman strode across the marble floor without escort. She put me in mind of the standing stones that surrounded the Sanctuary pool in Xancheira: squared shoulders, hair more gray than black, gray eyes, gray complexion, worn down by the years. Yet, like those slabs of granite, she bore a fierce, unbending stature. Pons.

  She stepped onto the dais, making it clear that it was no accident of light or the draping of her robes that gave her an asymmetrical appearance. She had only one arm.

  “Three questions, Curator Pons-Laterus.” Damon spoke over his shoulder as he strolled toward the table, cool and confident.

  “No.”

  Damon spun in his tracks. “You were told—”

  “Our single shared purpose is to root out corruption, Damon. You think to exalt me as virtuous, but I will not allow it. Because, of course, I had my portrait altered as well, just not by way of Lucian’s torture. My portrait exposed evidence of my dalliance with an ordinary and the child we made together, a violation of Registry law. My son and his father are well hidden these twenty years, far from the reach of any consequence that may befall me. My second fault? I knew what went on in the Tower cellars, but did nothing to stop it. I left an innocent man in the netherworld at the mercy of monsters. And third”—her dagger gaze did not leave the furious Damon—“on the night Remeni exposed our perfidy to the world, I forced his fingers onto Gilles de Albin’s chest and poured my own magic through those divinely gifted hands into a spell that burnt out the smirking villain’s heart. I did the same to my own shoulder to its ruin, so that the blame for that wounding and Gilles’s death would fall on Remeni’s head. My reasons were my own, but I will not allow you to charge Lucian with those crimes. And perhaps the judges should know that Gilles’s father, Guilian, did not—”