Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  “This is necessary, Lucian,” he said, once the guards had left us alone. “But it is not the end you imagine. Trust me.”

  I bleated a laugh. Appropriate for a stupid sheep. Yet he was not smirking as he said it. Not gloating. Not sad or sorry. He was excited.

  “Why in the name of every god should I trust you?”

  “Because I have never lied to you. Not ever. Yes, I know the Order considers omissions a lie but today you will understand why I had to omit certain pieces of our plan. Lucian de Remini will die today or tomorrow”—though I’d known it, anticipated it, resigned myself to it, my gut hollowed—“but Greenshank . . . that one will have a choice to make.”

  “You’re mad.” No other explanation presented itself.

  “Vainglorious, yes. Not mad.”

  He rubbed a thumb on his silver ring and my lips and tongue grew numb. “This is less grotesquely obvious than Pluvius’s leather mask. Be sure I will give you voice again when the time of your choice comes. For now, observe and consider all you know and all you’ve learned—of yourself, of our kind, and of Navronne.”

  • • •

  The eyes of the Fifty burnt holes in my skin as I stood chained to the railed dais in front of them. The pleasure of seeing Gramphier, Scrutari, and Pluvius led away similarly restrained and condemned to hang for their corruption did not alleviate my raging frustration at my enforced silence. But I resisted my body’s demands to break the oaken rails of the dais or bellow in wordless rage. That would but confirm the verdict I knew was coming. Perhaps dignity and silence could make one of the judges question.

  The judge at one end of the horseshoe table stood and read their finding. “It is with sincere regret that we, the Convocation of the Fifty, judge Lucian de Remeni-Masson, sole remaining descendant of two noble bloodlines, guilty of deliberate murder.”

  The faceless judge was a small woman who sounded sorry as she had not for the condemned curators. That made the words no easier to hear.

  “That the victims were conspirators in his own family’s murder . . . that the circumstances of that loss and the venal, repugnant actions of the Pureblood Registry drove a virtuous man to such extremity . . . cannot relieve the combined danger of his moral decay and exceptional power for magic. We see no remedy for his evils but death. At the sun’s zenith tomorrow, the time when power for magic is at its nadir, Lucian de Remeni’s hands will be severed from his body and burnt, and he will find his merciful end at the headsman’s block.”

  Merciful . . . So much work, so much loss, so much pain. Wasted. My sister left alone with a name she dared not use.

  Numb and shivering, I watched the crimson-and-silver clad guards unlock my chains. I wished they would take me straight to the block and be done with it. No matter Damon’s foolery, no matter what I’d believed since rediscovering my birth name, Lucian de Remeni and Paratus Greenshank were the same person. I relished the scents he loved and favored the food he liked. The places he’d walked felt familiar to me. When the axe severed Lucian’s neck, Greenshank would die, too.

  The hooded judges sat silent as the four guards led me out. My stumbling, shaking weakness gave them a good show.

  The surprise came when my escorts deposited me in the viewing gallery again, albeit muted and chained to the iron grillwork. Damon must want me to witness his triumphal reshaping of the world. At first I refused to look, huddling in my corner and apologizing to the gods for the insufferable presumption that had got me into this fix. But then the spokesman judge began reading again, and the words drew me to kneel up to watch and listen. . . .

  “. . . we judge the Pureblood Registry guilty of deliberate, savage murder throughout two centuries, of conspiracy, persecution, false imprisonment, extortion, wanton cruelty, forgery, and uncountable other crimes listed herein. We therefore recommend to the Sitting of the Three Hundred that the Pureblood Registry be dissolved, that its administrative functions regarding authentication of birth and bloodline, approvals of applications for marriage or childbearing, and regulation of pureblood interaction with the population of ordinaries be controlled directly by the Three Hundred. As Curator Lares-Damon proposes, a single Administrator of Pureblood Affairs should be named to oversee these activities, that person reporting directly to the Three Hundred. The Administrator should be a pureblood sorcerer of strong intellect, independent mind, and familiarity with the tasks required. Curator Lares-Damon is hereby forbidden to serve in the capacity of Administrator.”

  Independent mind. I had to laugh. Damon had persuaded them to appoint Pons after all.

  Once the judgment was signed and sealed, Damon rose again. Sincere. Glowing with solemn righteousness. Gods save all . . . anyone would believe him at peace with the gods, convinced that a plan approved by coerced judges would reform centuries of greed and self-interest.

  “This is a painful day for all of us,” he said. “But I feel the same relief as you, worthy judges. This age of infamy will soon be behind us. Now we must look to the future. Yestereve, I swore that purification of the Registry could change our position of authority in this dangerous world. What if I could bring you a leader who bears in his hand—and his blood—the means and the right to take us forward? A man who can break Caedmon’s stranglehold on pureblood governance, and ensure that we shall never have to bow and scrape to ordinaries again. A man who can bring peace to Navronne with reason, might . . . and magic?”

  The judges stirred.

  “For many years have I searched for such a man. Not until seven years ago, when I heard rumor of some extraordinary portraits in the Registry Archives, did I find him.” He tapped the leather-bound book in the crook of his arm. “A detail caught my eye in Lucian de Remeni’s portrait of a man who lived in the eastern reaches of Morian. It was so small an ornament of his garments that neither Remeni nor anyone else noticed it. The man had grown up disadvantaged, lacking a great family to embrace or teach him of his bloodlines or his capabilities. I sought him out and found him immeasurably gifted. And he had in his possession an artifact of extraordinary rarity. Today, as we stand on the cusp of destiny, I’ve brought him to testify before you.”

  Damon opened his arms wide as the man I’d seen unmasked the previous night entered the hall. A majestic figure, not hooded this morning, not masked. He wore the white and silver armor I had seen in his quarters, though without blazon of any kind. Even the hilt of his sword was unmarked. Had I any notion that Damon could orchestrate the weather, I would have believed he arranged the beams of sunlight that shot through the clerestory at the moment to illuminate the Knight Marshal of Evanide and his red-gold hair. Was it only my imagining or did a gasp of recognition ripple through the Fifty?

  “Step up, sir knight.” Damon motioned to the railed dais. “Your name, if you will.”

  “Geraint de Serre.”

  “You are halfblood.”

  “Indeed so. My pureblood sire defied his family and took an ordinary to wife. Though to be sure, my mother’s people, though fallen on hard times, never considered themselves ordinary, but claimed noble descent. On the day he took me to be registered, my father repented his crime and returned to his family. As required, my mother took me in for portraits, but warned me never to demonstrate the odd skills in my hands.”

  Spoken without apology. A quiet dignity testified of a man sure of his place in the world.

  Damon again. “When I inquired about your mother’s claim—for a noble bloodline was exactly what Lucian de Remeni’s portrait revealed—what did you show me?”

  The Marshal passed his silver pendant to Damon. . . .

  All unfolded as I had imagined. Damon showed each judge the gold celebration medallion embedded in the plain silver. In fine dramatic fashion, he told the story of Caedmon’s vanity and the birth medallions, so that when he removed the gold coin from the silver casing and handed it to the Marshal, every observer—myself included—held br
eath. The Marshal raised it high, and the medallion glowed of its own light. Beams of purple, azure, and green streamed into the aether, Caedmon’s colors—the purple of Ardra, the azure of Morian, the loden green of Evanore, the three provinces Caedmon had united to build Navronne.

  A tall judge burst from his seat. “How do we know this is not some trick? A halfblood born to an undisciplined servitor? A portrait done by a madman? This curator who has confessed to his own corruption happening upon the chimera—part royal, part sorcerer? Half of us here could create a coin that would shine such light when a hound licked it.”

  Even from my distance, I felt Damon’s smile. He’d known the question would come.

  The curator pulled two sheets from his folio and passed the first to the woman who had read the verdicts. “Here is the tale of our salvation, judges of the Fifty. The first is de Serre’s portrait, drawn by Lucian de Remeni in his first year as a Registry portraitist. Its divine truth is clear. Note the lily of Navronne stitched into Geraint’s tunic.”

  He gave them a while to pass the portrait one to the other. And then he passed along the gold medallion. “Examine this carefully. Commit its every detail to your memory. Those historians or examiners amongst you, use your skills to aid us.”

  Several of the judges called “affirmed” after examining it. Once he had retrieved the medallion, Damon gave the woman judge the second sheet. “This is the medallion’s formal validation. An examination, description, and explanation written by the most gifted historian our kind has ever known. A man so revered for his intellect, insight, and magic that King Eodward made him his Royal Historian.” My body tightened, knowing. “Vincente de Remeni.”

  My grandsire. Familiar only from story. It was but one more sorrow of this day that Vincente de Remeni’s next-to-last heir, the one who had inherited at least a part of his extraordinary gift, was going to die a murdering madman, and that his last descendent, gifted in myriad ways, would never be able to use his name. Ah, Juli, I am so sorry.

  As the last parchment passed down the line, one and then the other of the judges rose. By the time it had reached the end of the curved table they were leaving their seats in a flood, gone to touch a sorcerer of Caedmon’s bloodline, clamoring to know more of him. How would any who had not heard de Serre’s voice comprehend such instant willingness to believe?

  The Marshal received each one with a nod and his hand, and I knew the flood of warmth they would feel, as if he looked into their souls and knew their strengths and weaknesses, his gaze promising to make them better men and women. Had any leader of men ever been gifted so generously with a quality so befitting a king? One and then the other bent a knee before him. As the uproar grew, Damon stood to the side, serene. Fool that I was, I still wanted to believe.

  And then the Marshal raised his hands and spoke. “Know this about me, noble judges: I shall be no ordinary king.”

  Every one of them cheered at this, which struck me as unseemly. They were judges, vowed to be impartial in their considerations.

  “I have served the past seven years in a strict military order,” he continued, “learning of duty and justice and the power of magic to fight for them. I cannot change what I am. So you’ll not see me dressing myself in silks and furs and dallying with rich men’s daughters. Nor shall I mutilate the dead to bargain with Magrog or sail the coastal waters playing pirate captain to prove myself a worthy king.”

  They nodded, comparing him to Eodward’s vile sons.

  “From the day I am acknowledged by the Sitting of the Three Hundred, Geraint de Serre will be no more. Every hour of every day will I live masked to remind all that I have been and will ever be a bearer of a divine gift. When the day comes that I claim my birthright, I shall be known only as the Sorcerer King. Ordinaries, peasant and noble alike, will kneel to the power the gods have given those of our kind, and I and my heirs shall rule Navronne with righteous magic until the end of days.”

  So wild was the cheering, one would imagine him anointed already. My heart soared as well. As ever he spoke directly to my spirit, nourishing my deepest hopes. What a king he would make.

  I’d said that before. Fix had said it. But did I believe it?

  That glorious voice . . . that noble sympathy that woke my spirit . . . And yet where I saw a man of passion and vision, Dunlin believed the Marshal a man of ferocious rigor—which his own wild spirit craved. Fix believed the Marshal entirely pragmatic, yet could not shake faith in his honor after a single face-to-face meeting. The Archivist believed him devoted to the Order, even knowing he had violated the Order’s most sacred trust by destroying my relict and setting a mind-destroying trap aimed at brother knights. Surely it was Geraint de Serre’s bent to make others hear what they wanted to believe.

  What had he actually said? A masked king. Apart. No face to present to the world. Separate. Elite. Pure. Would what worked so well for a small fraternity focused on works of justice be the right thing for a great kingdom?

  Eodward had been a wise, generous, truly noble man who had brought Navronne out of war and into glory. His subjects saw his face, fought alongside him, and adored him. It was only his last years were blighted with the sad truth of his sons and the terrible turn in the weather, a mystery which no pureblood had been able to solve. If no one knew the identity of the Sorcerer King . . . then who would know his successor . . . or when his successor took over? Even more important, who in the world would hold him to account?

  Misgivings festered in me like Xancheira’s vines as the lauds faded and the hall emptied. What of Eodward’s lost will? Navronne’s succession was not based solely on primogeniture. Our king was empowered to choose his heir from any of his blood.

  As darkness fell, the sickness of depletion had me dizzy, my thoughts blown to nonsensical. When they came for me, I was asleep.

  I didn’t fully wake when they moved me. And it was likely in my dreams I heard Damon.

  “Did I not promise a day of triumph, Greenshank? Now we need to put you away for a while. Sleep well, knowing that the Remenis have determined the future of Navronne in glorious ways you cannot yet imagine.”

  When an iron door slammed, I embraced the dark.

  CHAPTER 40

  “Mother’s blessing for this day.”

  I was astonished. “I’m not dead?”

  “Nay, still not.” Lantern light revealed a skinny old man as pale and dry as a withered turnip and just as expressive.

  “What’s the time?” I sat up on a hard bed, unhappy to find shackles and silkbindings still in place. I could have batted this man down with one elbow.

  “Third hour of the morning watch. Sorry about the hobbles. The curator would not have you misbehave.”

  My execution was set for midday, not much time for misbehavior.

  My fingers twitched in their bindings. Why did they bother with silkbinding? It had been late when they retrieved me from the viewing gallery, so I could have slept only a few hours. Far too short a time to replenish such depletion. And I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten. My belly felt like to devour itself. Or perhaps that was just sickness at such abject failure at everything I’d tried to do.

  The turnip and four guards soon led me out. Damon awaited us at the top of the dungeon stair.

  “Will you not just get on with things?” I snapped. The hobble chain made going difficult. “Or feed me lest I puke bile on your executioner’s boots.”

  “We’ll get you cleaned up. But you’ll likely appreciate not having anything in your stomach for the next few hours.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Surely they didn’t remove the hands while the condemned sorcerer yet lived.

  A labyrinth of deserted, barren corridors brought us to a stone closet furnished with a drain, a tin tub, an incongruous lump of lavender-scented soap, and a servant who proceeded to strip, bathe, and shave me. Not just my chin, but head as well.
It was unnerving for both of us, with four enchanted sword points touching my bare skin and Damon eyeing every move.

  When I thanked the nervous youth for his care with the razor knife, he shook his head and pointed to his ears. Deaf. Goddess Mother . . .

  Though the air on my hairless scalp was strange, it was glorious to be clean, and the underdrawers and sleeveless tunic given me were of decent linen. But false bravado died unspoken, for at Damon’s gesture my hands were silkbound, separately this time, and the shackles replaced. He didn’t speak. Nor did he smirk or patronize or provide additional garments, save one. When the black mantle enshrouded me bald head to bare toes, even covering my eyes, the sickness in my gut gnawed deeper. Indeed I was glad not to have eaten.

  A short, brisk journey later, the mantle came off. We’d arrived at a chamber very like a smaller version of the Evanide armory, worktables littered with weapons, sharpening stones, engraver’s tools, boxes of metal scraps, flasks of oil, and such. No headsman’s block.

  “Place him as I instructed you,” said Damon. “Once he’s fixed to the wall, remove the chains, but leave the silkbindings.”

  Fear brought back the dizziness, and my mind scrambled for some way to stay the devil spider’s weaving before I lost my wits entire. Silkbound, I’d no way to work magic.

  “It’s too early,” I croaked. “I’ve got till midday.”

  No one spoke. Guards bound me to a wall with leather straps, facing out. Even when they were done with all the buckles, I was not particularly uncomfortable. But I couldn’t move anything the width of an eyelash, not even my head. Certainly not my hands.

  “Deunor’s fire, Damon, you value our magic and believe it should be protected. You know mine is unusual. How can you throw it away?”

  “I do value you.”

  “Then what is all this?”

  “Preparing you for your destiny. You’re a stubborn man and I can’t have you arguing or interfering. Once it’s done, all will be clear.”