by Carol Berg
Brave words, but his voice shook, his cold body quivered, and the odor of fresh piss wafted up his back.
“Why would I want to kill you? I don’t know you. You’re not Iaccar’s man, I’d guess, not hiding out here in the stable. Who set you to keep watch?”
“My da.”
“Angels’ grace, boy. Who is your da?”
“One as saved your nasty skin. I’m Will Deune.”
I let go of him and stepped back. Stupefied. “John Deune’s boy! And the other one, too?”
He nodded. He didn’t move a whit, but kept his face planted on the wall.
Excitement ruffled my spirit. “And your father, is he in Mancibar?”
“Not sayin’.”
Tiresome beast. “Then, is anyone with him—a big man, built like a smith? Bossy.”
“I know who you’re talking of. Smith’s not here.” Sobs cracked his whispers. “So are you gonna kill me or no?”
“I’ll not kill you, nor even cut off your cods. But you’ve got to tell me why. Why did you follow? Why are you watching? Your da never came back.”
“We done you no harm,” said the boy, on the verge of wailing. “You sent Da away.”
“Yes, I told him to go. But why are you here?”
“Watching is all.” The boy’s shoulders shook, the flood of snot augmented by tears.
Outside the stable, Hosten was bellowing. “Magus?”
I pressed close, spitting in Will’s ear. “I’m out of time, boy. Tell me a place where I can find you, should I wish to send a message to your da. I swear to you, I’ll know if you lie.”
“I co-come to the kitchens each morning at dawnbreak to carry breakfast to Wat, the head groom.” He sniffled and stuttered. “B-but I’ll not aid you in your foul plots! K-kill me if you want.”
I pressed a hand on his forehead, as if to drill a hole straight into his skull. The librarian is caged in the navel of the world.
The stable door burst open. I’d no time for more or to aim this bit of information anywhere in particular, but I felt better that I’d passed it on.
“You’re awfully ready to die,” I whispered. “Don’t. Now, get out of here.”
I stepped back, and this time he scrambled away quick and quiet as a stable rat. I snatched up his brush and applied it diligently to Devil’s hide, shaking my head in mystification at the workings of fate.
“Where are you, mage?”
Hosten came running and burst through the gate. He wrenched away the brush, flung it to the floor, and slammed me against the wall, much more effectively than I’d manhandled Will Deune. “Thinking of leaving us, are you?” he said in a deadly whisper. “Working spells?”
“I always dawdle about grooming horses before I escape,” I mumbled, spitting out splinters as he maneuvered me into the stableyard and back to the palace. I took great pleasure imagining what I could do to him did I loose my magic along the way.
“Seems your mistress has come up ill this morning,” he said as we trudged down the gallery to my rat hole. “Wouldn’t be your doing,
would it?”
“No.” Dismay chilled my momentary satisfactions. “I wouldn’t—”
“You’ll have time to think over your story. You’re to stay here until she sends for you.”
The door slammed and the bolt shot. The dark closed in.
NO ONE CAME. HOUR FLOWED into endless hour, worry and then hunger gnawing at my gut. My mouth grew dry and dusty as Carabangor’s streets. Nightmares plagued both sleep and waking. Asleep, I dreamt of emerald prisons and legions of the dead. Awake, I fretted that Jacard had gained the upper hand and chosen to let me wither in my dark coffin of iron and laurel—fit punishment for abandoning Portier in his.
When the door opened at last, I could scarce crawl to my feet. I stumbled into the light, shaking, but determined not to beg or weep.
Hosten passed me a mug of ale and a bun, which I devoured almost before they’d left his hand.
“Never thought it would go most of three days. But I dasn’t come without orders.” It was as near an apology as he’d likely ever made. That didn’t stop him from pricking my side with his sword. We took the familiar route to Xanthe’s apartments as if nothing had happened.
Hosten rapped on an inner door, hidden behind a curtain of yellow beads. “I’ve the magus, lady.”
Bolts slid and snapped. A pause. “Send him.”
Wrapped in a red silk bed gown and propped up by a score of fat, white pillows, Xanthe looked like a strawberry floating in a sea of cream. Though her complexion lacked its vibrant luster, she was entirely in command.
“Lock the door, magus.” Never had I heard such determined hatred in so frail a voice.
I obeyed. As soon as I occupied a stool at her bedside, she grabbed my tunic and pulled me close. “He’s tried to kill me again!”
“But the Stones prevent—”
“Oh, it was neither his hand nor a paid surrogate’s,” she snarled. “But it was his doing. ’Twas surely the same with my balcony. All these days he’s fed lies to his subjects. That I’m a priestess of the Spider God. That I devour men. That my sinister magus is the Spider God’s minion, who forces me to torture innocents.”
“I thought all loved you.” I said, my dry rasp no better than hers. “Who did it?”
“That morning I planned to take you riding, I woke early. As I walked in the gardens, a handsome youth brought me a lemon tart. You know how I adore them, and the youth was…quite…familiar, so I took it. Yet, two bites and I knew I’d not a moment to spare. I’ve witnessed poisonings of every kind. So I paralyzed the boy, dispatched Hosten to secure you, and locked myself in here. How I suffered! Your charmed potion and old Mutiga’s hag-root purge saved me.”
“Who was the youth? Why would he harm you?”
She waved her hand as if it was no matter. “He was the son of that wine merchant, Lastegiere. The vile creature spouted that I ‘was never going to devour his soul.’ What nonsense! It was Iaccar’s lies spurred him.”
It wasn’t nonsense. Lastegiere was the man whose house we’d burnt for a public slight. Xanthe had taken the son to bed first, and then the father, and then played them against each other for a tenday. The boy had many reasons to feel his life devoured.
“Iaccar executed the boy and his father and sold the wife and younger children to a slaver who’s already hauled them off to Syanar. Convenient, is it not? I’ve none to question and none to trust but you.”
“What would you have me do?”
Her features were those of the beast masks that warded deadhouse gates. “I want Iaccar dead. And I want Tychemus. Alter the Stones; rip out their magic and reshape it so I can kill him and take his Stone. Do these things for me and I’ll share all with you. I’ve promised you that which you most desire. Your sight, your freedom, those are important, but your life’s blood is sorcery, and I can give you all three. As my sworn consort, you shall have the Seeing Stones to wield as my equal.”
That some perverse triumph arose from a stupid boy’s attempt to remedy his family’s foolishness shamed me. That despite my constant avowals, apprehension, and deep-rooted fears, my soul yet quivered with desire at the power she offered disgusted me. But I was what I was. I relished the moment and swore to make use of it.
“A bargain to set my soul afire, Mistress, as you well know. But it would be the most dangerous work I’ve ever attempted, our chances of winning through so small as to be unseeable. Yet one thing I must have before I can agree.”
Her grip near gouged my forearm bones. “What thing?”
“I must read Tychemus before we reveal our hand.”
“He’ll never allow that.”
“Then you must find a way to separate him from the Stone so I can get to it. To subvert the Stones’ protections will require time and preparation. I’ll need to know everything possible about Tychemus…and the three together.”
She laid back on her pillows. “I can separate him from Tyche
mus. Women always throw themselves madly on men after a narrow escape from death. And stupid men always believe it. He’ll not refuse what I offer.”
“And how will that give me access?”
“I’ll tell Iaccar that I fear you’ve conspired with this boy to poison me. When I confess how ill I was and how terrified of dying when I’ve only just begun to live, he’ll display great sympathy and invite me to dine with him. It is his habit. Afterward, we’ll come back here. I’ll arrange for someone to bring you here while I’m out.”
“Hosten will suspect—”
“It will not be Hosten. Hide yourself here and you’ll know when Tychemus awaits. You’ll have until dawn. I’ll not stomach the snake longer.”
Somehow I did not doubt her.
“Then we’ve a bargain.”
Once I’d downed as much food and drink as I could stomach, Xanthe summoned Hosten. By the time he arrived at her apartments, she had me on my knees, my back afire and near losing all I’d just eaten. “You arrogant, incompetent worm! I’ll teach you not to hide things from me. Perhaps I’ll lock you away for three more days. Perhaps I’ll have your hole bricked up.”
Hosten drew his blade and motioned me out.
“Do not succor him, Captain,” said Xanthe, snarling. “Do not listen to his pitiful cries. Do not even stay near his door, else I’ll blind you as I do him, and stopper your ears so they’ll never again hear your children’s voices.”
She touched the Stones and spat the word that would remove my sight. Yet even as my stomach lurched, no darkness fell. She must have touched Rhymus instead of Orythmus. But I cursed and staggered forward at Hosten’s shove. I knew well how to play this part.
THROUGH THE REST OF THAT sweltering afternoon, I forced myself to sleep. Trying to wrestle more meaning from the evidence I had would be no use, and I would need every smat of power I could muster. The key to Kajetan and Jacard’s plan, to the use he planned to make of Portier and me, would lie in the three Seeing Stones together. I dreamt of emerald walls and firestorms and young men’s skin cracking as Kajetan tried to wrestle his way into them.
When the door scraped, I leapt to my feet drenched in sweat, but instantly awake. Gold and purple wisps streaked the western sky. The young man with freckles, the same who had led me to Portier, guided me along a circuitous route to Xanthe’s door. “She said to be patient,” he whispered, waving me into the deserted salon. “This could take a very long time.”
I settled into a wall niche behind a man-high statue of a winged horse. As the hour crawled past and the light dimmed, I wrapped my mind around all I needed to do. Nothing so different from my approach to the other Stones. Care. Precision. I could not allow the pressure of time to drive me to mistakes.
In our early days together, I had repeatedly set Anne urgent problems, requiring her to unravel some puzzle to stave off an unpleasant result. I would berate her and yell at her throughout the time. It had taken her months to learn to stay focused when I hurried her. But she had never complained. She had come to me to learn discipline.
At the first opportunity I must dispatch Will Deune to warn her. Compel him with magic, if necessary. Kajetan knew very well who had driven the knife into his heart. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and tried to put her out of mind.
Xanthe’s new clock ticked away an hour. One of her admirers had given it to her. Xanthe marveled that its hands could mark the sun’s progress, and she was forever comparing it with the ancient sundial in the palace gardens. Xanthe did not lack admirable qualities. Many would say we two lunatics made a fine pair. But she would never speak to me of star patterns, or theories of nature, or her favorite books. She would never labor for two years with an embittered blind man just to ensure she could never use her power for ill.…
I had never feared death. My own life had ever seemed but an accident of nature, as like to end abruptly as to continue into interminable aging. On any other day, I would have welcomed one as much as the other. But something had changed in me. To end here, so far away from those evenings when Anne would read to me at Pradoverde, those times when I would think blindness not so wretched and her pity not so terrible if they induced her to share the books she treasured with me. Her voice had revealed a soul as deep as the roots of the mountains.…
I drew Anne’s pendant from my boot and pressed it to my forehead. It burnt, as if left lying in the sun all day. Hosten was nowhere near here, and even at his usual post he’d not noticed the small things I’d worked. To reveal the secrets of Anne’s gift, all I had to do was speak its key, the Aljyssian word for illumination. “Luminesque.”
In the space of the word, I was returned to Castelle Escalon, walking its sprawling expanse while fearful eyes turned away, hurrying to my apartment where I could breathe in the light before plunging yet again into the fearsome web of murder and mystery. A heavy doom had shadowed those days, as it did this night. But Anne was there…so afraid, so alone…shattered by a bellowing anger through the aether.
But another voice offered her comfort and kindness, though that person, too, was alone and troubled. Are you injured? In danger? There’s been no one, ever. Trust me. One word…
And all her fear was consumed in curiosity…and sadness. She had wept for her lonely comforter.
Before I could think what it was I experienced, my mind was assaulted by the garish lights and noise of feasting…singers, mourners, a journey feast with Queen Eugenie presiding. Interminable. Boring. And Anne was there, too…disgusted, horrified at the leering suitor thrust into her face.
But someone had challenged her to a game…and disbelieving, desperate for some sign of truth, she played: You detest jolly pipe music, she said, excited at the simplicity of the impossible.
Exactly so, said her companion. Now you. Come, test me.…
With the words, a wave swept through her. She named it pleasure, relief, and a deep and resonant joy…feelings not her own, yet vigorous enough to leave her smiling.
Gods…it was me! I had been so focused on her, so fascinated at that bright mind, at her quick acceptance, at the depths of her talent, I’d not realized what she had sensed from me—what she had sparked in me. Had I ever before experienced a deep and resonant joy? Passion, yes, for the glory of magic. Satisfaction, yes, in my relationship with Portier and the tasks we pursued together. But circumstance had forced me to push Portier away. And magic and riddle solving had but laid a blanket over my emptiness. Nothing had ever so transformed my life as had Anne de Vernase.
In wonder, I let the nireal’s enchantment play out.
Our talks of star patterns and night-blooming plants.
Our fight to win the night’s battle at Mont Voilline.
The moment she had opened herself to me completely, gifting me her power for magic, allowing me to wield it for the rightful end we pursued. Absolute trust. Uncompromising faith.
In sharing her experience of our joinings, she allowed me to see myself through her eyes. All these things had occurred in the aether. All was truth. And I had been too blind to see it…long before I was blind.
I am your reflection, she had said when she came to Pradoverde and gave me the nireal, offering all of herself. My outward appearance is nothing like what lurks inside me. I don’t despise you. I don’t pity you. I know you. I see you, and everything I see, I value.
And I had never believed her until now.
I hung the pendant around my neck and tucked it inside my shirt. Closing my eyes to Xanthe’s room and the sordid deceptions that must go on there, I reached deep into the aether. Anne couldn’t hear me speak, but I felt the pulse of her life. I would recognize her at a distance as vast as that to the moon. And I clung to that ferocious presence, allowing the river of feeling and voice, magic and dream, to sweep over, under, and through me, until a woman’s giggles and a man’s heavy breathing pulled me out.
CHAPTER 30
36 DUON, NIGHT
“I know it’s bold to ask you to examine my inner
room, Regent Iaccar, but while I lay so ill, I sensed a vile presence hovering about me.” Xanthe’s peppery manner could become Nessia’s honey whenever she chose. “I’ll not trust him to keep me safe. I’ve had the most terrible thought. What if the poisoner was his tool?”
“Your trust shames me, lady, especially after my appalling temper of late. Certainly Dante is capable of any wickedness. I’ve seen how he uses women, and you are so innocent…so lovely.…” Jacard’s voice had dropped an entire register. I could easily imagine why.
Had I not known Xanthe, her seduction might have had me panting. Had I not known Jacard, his humility might have deceived me. He had once fooled Anne.
“On the table beside the window, you’ll find honeyed wine,” said Xanthe. “Pour me a cup—and one for you, if you wish—while I change out of this stifling gown. He says I look best in Sabrian garb, but I’ve had something new made. You can judge.”