by Carol Berg
Thalassa had ever been adept at making her point. Sorcerous seduction was one of the few crimes for which a pureblood could be arrested. As with everything forbidden, I’d tried it. But I left it behind when I learned of pleasuring.
“I knew it,” said Stearc, growling. “By rock and stone, a pureblood renegade…he endangers us all with every breath. We should kill him—”
“My lord!” said Abbot Luviar, moving slightly to the front of them all, his pock-grooved face unsettlingly flushed. “We do not speak of murder in Iero’s house! Whatever his status in the secular world, Brother Valen is a vowed novice of Saint Ophir, my responsibility and my charge.”
“Father Abbot,” said Brother Victor, “the law is clear. If we do not turn him over and even the remotest hint of his status as recondeur becomes known, the consequences could ruin us. We don’t know if the lighthouse can survive the destruction of the abbey. Whatever else, you and Gillarine will be lost to our cause, and the stocking of the lighthouse will surely come to a halt. With the royal succession near settled, our position is precarious enough. Yet, if we give him up, he knows enough to bring us to ruin.”
Brother Victor’s emotionless logic was far more terrifying than Stearc’s outburst. But then again, naught should terrify a dead man, and I was dead, no matter whether or not these people allowed me to keep breathing.
“The hierarch will welcome his information about our plans and use it. The lighthouse is compromised, as are the identities of those in this room—”
“Of course,” I said. My skin burned. My soul burned. “Because I refuse to live as a slave to my family and the Pureblood Registry—allowing them to tell me whom I may speak to, what profession I must follow, whom I will marry, and what children I will or will not breed, allowing them to sell my life to the highest bidder—then I must necessarily be untrustworthy.”
“It is not merely your refusal to submit, Valen,” said Thalassa. “It is that your refusal to submit is the key to your nature—wholly and entirely a servant of your own pleasure. I would not trust you with my dog lest you have discovered some amusement in tormenting dogs. I cannot and will not stand idle and allow you to escape the consequences of a lifetime’s self-indulgence.”
“You know nothing of my life,” I said.
She broke from the circle and walked slightly behind me, so that I would have to turn away from the others in order to face her. I refused to turn, though I felt her examination taking in my filthy habit and offal-stained feet and the sweating, blood-grimed hands I clenched at my back.
Every bone and sinew demanded I run. But I was not so naive as I had been at eight, when Thalassa had taunted me into my first break for freedom, only to stand smirking as my father hauled me home by my hair. The liveried men outside would be Thalassa’s escort—pureblood warriors with magically tuned senses. She could summon them with a thought.
“You even foul your monk’s costume, Valen,” she said.
I held my tongue and my position, trapping the familiar hatred inside until my skin stretched with the size of it.
After a moment, she drifted back toward her fellows. Only thirty, she moved with the imperious gravity of a lifelong queen. Though her temple position left her exempt from the mask and cloak required of purebloods when mingling with ordinaries, her gown and jewels certainly met the Registry standards of conservative elegance. A Sinduri high priestess, one of the five highest-ranking servants of the elder gods. Our father must be preening.
“Abbot Luviar, I must and will report my brother to the Registry. Our family has endured twelve years of disgrace that will be relieved only when he is returned to our discipline. I am, as ever, wholly committed to our task, but we must find other means to accomplish our goals. Valen is mentally unstable and entirely untrustworthy, and I’ll vow that any help he has given you has been purest chicanery. You needn’t fear for our secrets. I’ve ways to ensure his silence before he is remanded into Registry custody.”
And that chilled me to the marrow. The Sinduri were known to have potions and spells to alter the mind. My bravado crumbled in an instant. “Holy father, please, don’t let her—”
Luviar’s hand stopped my begging before I completely abased myself. “Sinduria, Lord Stearc, friends and brothers, before we undertake some drastic course, we must proceed with our conclave. Rightly or wrongly, I took it upon myself to bring Valen into our circle. And despite his regrettable lack of…candor…he has been of great assistance. We cannot separate our needs and his abilities from his fate. So let us sit and consider both issues together.”
The abbot swept through the door and into the parlor, Brother Victor on his heels. A seething Thalassa followed. Lord Stearc waved Gram and Elene into the room ahead of him. He himself remained near the door, as if prepared to rush back through and prevent my escape. Only Gildas was left with me.
He shook his head and grinned. “I thought I had guessed your secrets, Brother, but I will say you have confounded me. A pureblood sorcerer. And Janus de Cartamandua’s grandson on top of it. I shall surely wake up tomorrow living on the moon.”
He took my arm, and we strolled across the atrium as if going into supper in a nobleman’s hall. As we stepped onto the plum-colored carpet of the parlor, he leaned close and whispered, “Be patient, friend. We’ll not abandon you.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, bolstered by his friendship. “I needed a refuge. I never intended—” But, of course, intention had naught to do with anything. I had knowingly put them at risk. Only now did the callousness of that choice hit home.
Six straight-backed chairs formed a circle next the hearth. Gildas joined the abbot, Brother Victor, Stearc, and Thalassa, who were already in place. Luviar waved me to the last unoccupied chair of the inner circle, between Gildas and Brother Victor. Gram humbly pulled up a stool just behind Thane Stearc. Elene, a proper squire, remained standing beside the door to the atrium, her hands clasped at her back, eyes straight ahead, her face a mask.
“I cannot credit that you would admit Valen to our deliberations, Luviar,” said my sister, her bead collar clicking as she shifted in her seat. “He should be confined. He will try to run away. It is his lifelong habit. The sooner I blind his knowledge of our secrets the better.”
“I appreciate your sentiments, lady,” said Luviar. “Yet the tale of our experiments with your grandfather’s book might give you a new perspective. Of course, we must evaluate Brother Valen’s contributions differently in the light of this new information about his lineage. Gram, would you please report on the events of these past few days?”
The secretary stood, bowed respectfully to the abbot, Lord Stearc, and Thalassa, and began a detailed, well-structured, and as far as he was capable, accurate account of our search for the pool known as Clyste’s Well. Nauseated, my throat parched, I slumped in my chair as he recited. The knowledge that Thalassa’s accusations were substantially true did not improve my disposition in the least. The room felt unbearably hot. I wished I dared throw off my cowl or open a window.
Gram paused his recitation to ask Brother Gildas to confirm our discovery of the Well. Brother Gildas stated soberly that to his fullest belief, the pool was the one for which they had been searching. “…though I saw no evidence of a Dané guardian there.”
Before the secretary could move on to the tale of the tree and the encounter with the Dané, Thalassa leaned forward. Her painted eyes, already larger than life, widened into great dark windows. “So you believe that Valen read our grandfather’s book of maps, recited the guide spell under his breath, and led you unerringly to a Dané sianou?”
The abbot looked puzzled. “Yes.”
“Go on. Tell me the rest.” Rouged mouth fixed in judgment, she folded her arms and sat back, biding her time, poised like a cat on the brink of a grand leap.
I closed my eyes and sank lower in the chair. I tried to bury my head in my hands, but I could not bear the stink and had to stuff my hands up my sleeves instead. My sister was going to
tell them I could not read. Then she would relate how I had made an art form of lies since I was out of the crèche, how I had preferred to steal what I wanted rather than be given the very same thing by people I loathed, how I had destroyed everything of value I had ever touched, that I had spent three-quarters of my life from age five through fifteen besotted with drink, and had broken every rule of civilized society as if it were my sworn duty.
The wretched part was that, once she had told them those truths, they would believe everything she said of me, true or not. I hated that thought more than I had hated anything in a very long while. I hated what I had seen on Elene’s face. On Brother Victor’s. On Gram’s. At least I’d not had to witness Jullian’s reaction. Recondeur—traitor to family, king, and gods, one who spits on the power to work magic, the greatest gift given to humankind. And the boy already thought he knew the worst of me.
I pondered how I could possibly wrest some shred of dignity from this day. Stripping a pig now sounded like an afternoon’s delight. Meanwhile, Gram took up the story from our meeting on the hillside below Fortress Groult, ending with the Dané vanishing into the night.
“You actually saw one of them…spoke to a Dané?” For the first time, Thalassa’s attention was diverted from scorn and anger, her expression open in sincere astonishment.
“She spoke to us is more like it,” said Stearc. “She certainly did not listen…” He assessed the encounter as he had before—wondrous, but accomplishing nothing of substance.
“Have you anything to add, Brother Valen?” asked the abbot, startling me out of my gloom. “Anything that you observed that Gram has left out? Lord Stearc says you seemed…caught up…in the incident. And we need to know exactly what you did to invoke the power of the map on both occasions. Did you bring some pureblood sorcery to bear beyond that held in the book?”
They were all staring at me again. Luviar’s inquiry had reminded Thalassa of her day’s pleasure—righteous duty and personal entertainment entwined. She was near bursting, her heavy loop of hair quivering, her full red lips ready to spew condemnation for years of my petty insults and my not-so-petty offenses against her and the rest of our kin.
Well, nothing for it. I sat up straight.
“I was indeed overcome by the sight of the Dané,” I said, feeling lingering echoes of my strange grief even as I spoke of it at such a distance. If I was to attempt honesty for a change, I could not ignore the experience. “I’ve seen naught in all my life…in all my travels…in all my dreams…so fearsome and, at the same time, so marvelous. I felt this…immeasurable grace…that they yet live. Someone once told me that the Danae were the living finger of the god in this world. Perhaps that’s what I felt…that I was unworthy to see such a wonder.”
Though I had begun my confession hoping to garner sympathy—any advantage that might help mitigate a dismal future—somehow I had wandered very close to emotions I had never thought to share with anyone, especially one of my family. Profoundly unsettled, I continued. “I cannot tell you how I found the correct place to leave the nivat or even how I was able to locate the Well, except that it was some odd mixture of luck and ordinary experience at finding my way about the world and, yes, inherited talents. But it is impossible that I invoked the power of the maps.”
Puzzlement and disbelief had them shifting in their chairs, but I allowed no interruption. If I dared so much as look at them, I’d never go through with this.
“As my sister is yearning to reveal, I am afflicted with a disorder of the mind, a blindness that leaves me incapable of deciphering written words. At a more appropriate time and place, I will beg forgiveness for this and all my deceptions, holy father and good brothers, hoping that you will understand my fear in the face of your great kindness when I came here wounded and desperate. My experience of family is difficult—the details best left unspoken—but I assure you that I professed my vows with sincerity, if not…without reservation. As to how my disorder affects my use of my grandfather’s book—my book, as it happens, not my family’s, as he gave it to me on my seventh birthday—it means I cannot read place-names or written spells, and so must rely on my instincts, inborn talents, my knowledge of maps, and my spellmaking skill to interpret the drawings.”
I resisted the urge to add more. No need to humiliate myself further. If I was to be shipped off to Palinur to the gentle discipline of my family and the Pureblood Registry, I would get my fill of humiliation.
Stearc mumbled oaths. Brother Gildas masked a grin with curled fingers. Gram looked thoughtful and, for once, did not drop his eyes when they met mine. Unfortunately he was too far away for me to read anything in them—not that I was likely to see anything at all rewarding. Elene remained in the doorway, but now her back was to me. Probably for the best.
“Do not allow him to get away with this,” said Thalassa, tight as a moneylender’s fist. “Were Valen standing at Mother Samele’s right hand and suggesting I ascend her holy mount, I would not move one step forward, lest I fall into Magrog’s pit. He is a consummate liar—”
“Sinduria, if you please.” Gram’s quiet insistence drew their attention away from me, for which I was grateful. “Lady, the last time we spoke of Janus de Cartamandua, you indicated that he was very ill. Does he yet live?”
Not shifting her glare one quat, Thalassa jerked her head in the affirmative.
“Impossible!” The old man had been half in his grave before I’d run away—past seventy years old and addled beyond use. And gods knew I’d wished him dead often enough before and since. How could he not be dead?
“Brother Valen, did your grandfather know of your difficulty with reading?” Gram pursued whatever mad line of reasoning he had begun without altering his tone.
“Everyone in the house knew of his willful ignorance,” Thalassa snapped before I recovered wit enough to answer. “Valen’s only disorder is his despicable, intransigent soul. Surely you cannot swallow this playacting?”
“Please, Sinduria, hear me out.” Gram raised his hand but not his voice. “The causes of your brother’s condition are not relevant here. Only whether Janus de Cartamandua knew of the problem, which you have confirmed that he did. So, Brother Valen, your grandfather gave you the book on your birthday. Do you believe that he intended you to use it? Or was his intent merely to give you something of value to cherish or to sell?”
“To cherish? Hardly. Every time Capatronn—my grandfather Janus—returned to that house, he tried to teach me of the book. I hated it. I hated him. I did everything I could think of to be free of his lessons. But he insisted, saying that I must use the book to follow in his footsteps, and that our family would come to be the most powerful in the world. He was crazed with the idea and made me swear over and over, on holy writs, on shrines, on my life, and always, always with my blood, that I would use the book when I was old enough. When I was ‘free to do as I pleased,’ he put it. He stank—”
Gods, I could still smell his sour body, the stench of urine and ale and his rotting teeth when I saw him last. And I could see him on so many occasions before that, his black eyes bulging as he made me prick my finger yet again and slap the aingerou that supported the mantel over his hearth, leaving a bloody smear.
I reined in my disgust. “He was…is…mad. It was unpleasant.”
Gram nodded as if I had just given a recitation of the great vices and virtues or an accounting of the abbey grain stores. “So I would guess that reading is not essential to your use of the book. That would explain your success. And if you, as a…an ill-mannered, rebellious boy…refused your grandfather’s tutelage, that would explain your uncertainty as to how that success was accomplished.”
A nice hypothesis, but I didn’t see what difference it made. If I didn’t know what I had done, then I could scarcely repeat my “success.” But the gaunt secretary had tangled the others in his thread of reasoning. When he leaned forward on his stool, scarcely visible around his lord’s thick shoulder, they leaned forward to listen.
Brother Victor had been rubbing his lip thoughtfully as Gram spoke. Now he dropped his hand to his lap and crinkled his brow even more. “Rightly spoken, Gram, yet the Dané’s reference to thievery and violation is worrisome—clearly obstacles in our path, though we’ve no idea what they mean.”
Good to hear of crimes they could not lay at my feet; I had never stolen from the Danae. Though the consideration of how close I’d come to stealing the offering of nivat gave me a sudden shiver. The damnable, cursed doulon.
The chancellor turned to Thalassa. “Lady, have you had any success in learning more of the Danae’s withdrawal from human intercourse?”
“No. The old man is confined to his room and speaks nothing of sense to anyone.”
“You have mentioned in the past that his ramblings include frequent references to…a person you cared not to name. Is it possible…?” Brother Victor was surely a master of diplomacy. His gaze flicked to me, and my sister did not whisk his head off with some priestess’s spell.
“Yes,” she said, twisting her mouth in distaste. “Valen was ever his favorite. No one could understand it. When he gave that vile, undisciplined child the last extant copy of the most precious book in the world, our parents—”
Thank all gods, she stopped, perhaps realizing that the seamier aspects of the Cartamandua-Celestine household were perhaps not the proper topic for a serious group of monks and lords come to discuss the end of the world. I had arrived at the same conclusion in my own rant.