Flesh and Spirit tld-1

by Carol Berg

  “It won’t fit as your own should and will. But Silos had an extra and was willing to loan it until we get to Palinur.”

  No restraint they would use to bind me would be so loathsome, as she was well aware.

  “You believe you know me, Lassa, and in some things”—I flipped the mask between my fingers—“your judgment is correct. But I will never be like you or the rest of our kin. I have walked free in this world, and I won’t forget it.”

  But this was not the day to fight. So I lifted the scrap of silk to my face and aligned the stiffened edge down the center of my forehead, nose, and mouth, feeling the spider-thin fabric tighten across my left cheek and brow. Its spelled weaving caused it to adhere along its borders and around my eye and hairline and lips, imperfectly in this case. Silos’s face was clearly wider than mine; the thing reached halfway across my left ear. The silk smelled of his cheap perfume.

  Thalassa cocked her head to one side as I lowered my hands. “Not comely, especially with your ridiculous hair, but sufficient to remind you of who you are. Perhaps, with a return to discipline and some time for thought, you will come to appreciate your position.”

  She summoned her two guards, short, sturdy men with the straight black hair and deep skin color typical of purebloods. They wore green half masks trimmed in purple to match their livery and wine-colored cloaks. They silkbound my palms together, fingertips tucked in, as they had in the night. Then they affixed a lightweight shackle to my left ankle, draped the dangling end of the chain over my wrists so I would not trip on it, and led me up the prison stair.

  We emerged in the yard between the library and the abbot’s house whence Prince Perryn had ridden out with the Hierarch of Ardra. A party of horses and ten leather-clad men-at-arms waited near the front door. What appeared to be the entire complement of the abbey—monks and lay brothers—filled the rest of the yard. Many somber. Most gawking. Neither Stearc nor his daughter nor his secretary was present.

  A new storm was upon us. The sharp wind tore the layers of scud that fronted massive gray clouds. Cloaks and gowns flapped like pennons.

  Abbot Luviar and Prior Nemesio stepped from the front rank, exchanging farewells with Thalassa. I gathered that my sister’s public business at Gillarine had something to do with sheep breeding contracts for her temple’s flocks.

  Jullian stood alone between the lay brothers and the monks, staring at me in shocked disbelief. His eyes traveled from the mask to my bound hands to the loop of metal about my ankle and the slender chain draped over my wrists. I tried to catch his eye…winked at him…but it was as if he could not recognize me behind the mask.

  The face that had drifted in and out of my troubled dreams all night was nowhere to be seen. Young Gerard, great of heart, but slow of eye and head when it came to reading, was not there.

  I turned to the abbot, interrupting the inane formalities. “Is Gerard not found yet?”

  Thalassa stiffened and raised a warning finger. “Silence, recondeur.”

  “Please, he is a friend…a good boy. Father Abbot—”

  “We have a party searching,” said Luviar. “You indicated you had not seen him.”

  “Not since dinner on the day I returned from Caedmon’s Bridge. If I could help…Lassa…Sinduria serena…perhaps my skills could—”

  “You might possess the skills to search for the boy, Valen,” said Thalassa. “But you have long since squandered trust. I cannot permit it.”

  “But—”

  “Silos, see the recondeur onto his mount. Bind his wrists to the saddle, his foot to the stirrup, and his horse to mine. Then you may aid Abbot Luviar in his search as we discussed.”

  The abbot said nothing.

  Hatred flooded my veins in that moment. I hated Thalassa and her purebloods and their smug righteousness. I hated the abbot and his single-minded passion. I hated past, present, and future with equal bitterness, and I hated the estrangement I saw in Jullian’s eye. I hated that they would not allow me to help one of the few people in the world I’d give a pin for, and I hated that my sister’s warning stayed my feet—if I misbehaved again, the future could be even worse. The desire to run was an arrow piercing my lungs. Most of all I hated that after twelve years of running, I could think of nowhere to go but away.

  The perfumed man in the green mask and wine-colored cloak took my arm, but I shook off his gloved hands for one moment. For these past weeks, the men of Gillarine had given me a place, and I could not depart without acknowledging their kindness. Touching my bound hands to my forehead, I faced the brothers of Saint Ophir and bowed from the hip. Then I allowed Silos to lead me away.

  PART THREE

  Bitter Blue Days

  Chapter 22

  Lukas, the sallow valet, scraped the last hair from my chin and dabbed at my face with a damp rag long gone cold. It was tempting, as always, to poke him in the ribs or let fly a particularly foul obscenity, just to see if he would flinch. He wouldn’t. Of years somewhere between forty and fifty, the dried-up little ordinary had likely come into pureblood service when he was twelve. He knew very well that his position and livelihood depended on absolute discretion and perfect deportment in the face of temperamental fits, sorcery, and even forced service to a creature of such reprehensible character as a recondeur.

  Released from his unwelcome ministrations for the moment, I drifted over to the window, rubbing my head that still felt itchy and odd. Almost three weeks had passed since leaving Gillarine, and my hair was at last the same length all over. Scarcely a knucklebone long, of course. Lukas had trimmed all of it to match my regrowing tonsure. Neat. Seemly. Like my shaven chin, clean, trimmed fingernails, and the plum-colored silk shirt and unadorned pourpoint of sober gray velvet Lukas laid out on my bed. Like my temporary accommodation here in the Registry palace—a small, barren chamber, high above the unhealthy airs of the streets, its window discreetly barred, its door firmly locked, and its walls wrapped in spells that made it impossible I work any of my own. The molds of pureblood custom and protocol were squeezing me back into the shape laid out for me before my birth. No blood, no mess. No breath. No life.

  I pressed my forehead to the glass. Snow again today. Frosty Palinur sprawled down the hill toward the river, the unfinished towers of the cathedral protruding like bony arms reaching for heaven’s mercy—only too late. The groves and vineyards that blanketed the gentle hills, rolling toward the horizon and beyond, were buried in killing frost. Sky, cloud, and horizon formed one chilling mass of gray, a pure reflection of my spirits.

  “Your shirt, plebeiu.” If such a stick could be said to enjoy anything, Lukas enjoyed addressing me by the low title, reserved for purebloods in disgrace. He assumed I cared.

  Lukas dangled the silk shirt from his bony hands, playing another of his games by remaining stolidly beside the bed, so that I must walk over to him to be dressed. If I stood my ground, I would be late. Yet to dress myself in the presence of a servant was a breach of pureblood protocol. Either offense would reap punishment: a meal withheld or reduced to bread alone, an extra hour added to my day’s humiliation, or my lamps extinguished an hour early. Every infraction, no matter how small, earned its consequence. Brother Sebastian would approve.

  I crossed the room. As I stuck my arms in the soft sleeves of the shirt, the locks on the door snapped open, and a chill draft blew in a thickset man muffled in a claret-hued pelisse. He whipped off his mask, and snowflakes flurried from his hair and shoulders onto the polished wood floor.

  “Magrog’s prick!” The oath burst out of me like an untimely belch. Though I was working with great diligence at discipline, I was not yet ready to face more of my family than my excessively prim, excessively hostile elder sister. Besides, I had last seen my brother, Max, on Black Night, attending Bayard the Smith. “What the devil are you doing in Palinur…here?”

  Lukas scurried to take Max’s things and hang them on the brass wall hooks. With a drawn-out sigh, Max pulled my one chair out of the corner and sat dow
n, raising his thick, bristly eyebrows. “Manners, little brother?”

  Blast him to the fiery pits! To abase myself to my brother soured my stomach. But Lukas would relish reporting any lapse in protocol. Gathering up the personal opinions I’d strewn about for public viewing, I clenched my teeth, touched my fingertips to my forehead, and bowed deeply from the hip. Purebloods did not reveal emotions. Purebloods did not develop friendships. Purebloods must remain detached from other people so that their magic, which belonged to their family or contracted masters, would not be tainted. Every human relationship must be rigorously shaped and strictly constrained by manners, protocol, and titles awarded according to rank, gender, and kinship.

  “Greetings, ancieno. Please forgive my humble welcome after so many years. Alas, I’ve no refreshment to offer, no gossip to share, and you have already found the only seat in my apartments save the bed. And having no idea of your current title, I can add no more honor to the greeting. Are you as elevated as our sister?”

  I chose not to mention I’d seen him with Prince Bayard. I was falling easily into pureblood habits. Secret knowledge was liquor in our veins.

  “You tread a bridge of sand with speech like that, plebeiu. Did they permit such impertinence in the Karish monk-house?” Max grinned and propped his muddy boots on the bedcovers, just missing the gray velvet garment. “Damn, I wish I’d seen you gowned and shorn! The mere consideration of our wild, truculent Valen all prim and prayerful has me thinking gatzi have turned the world backside before.”

  “Willing submission comes easier, ancieno. Would you mind very much if I continued to dress? I am required to be ready at Terce—third watch.” He’d likely not know the Karish term that came so naturally to me now.

  He waved his hand, weighted heavily with a ruby and sapphire ring. “Wouldn’t think of interfering with your duties. Pardon me if I enjoy the sight overmuch. I certainly don’t want to be seen out there in the streets gawking at you, but it quite thrills me to watch you brought to heel. You’ve caused us all inordinate trouble.”

  I motioned Lukas to continue. He dropped a second shirt of fine wool over my head and then added the pourpoint with its interminable buttons down front and sleeves.

  “I arrived in the city late last night and heard the news,” Max continued. “The infamous Cartamandua recondeur brought to heel at last. Our family disgrace—well, not lifted, but relieved. Nothing can erase what you did. Did you know you cost Patronn his royal appointment? Twelve years he’s lived now without a contract of his own. If you thought he detested you before…well, you surely know more than I about that. Do you think he still has the strap?”

  Clearly my sins had not taxed Max’s humor as sorely as they had my elder sister’s; he had always enjoyed my punishments and humiliations inordinately. Yet I could not help but feel his excessive good cheer rooted in some circumstance beyond my capture. “You appear to have prospered despite my transgressions. What kind of contract do you serve? Lassa’s given me no news of the family.”

  In fact, my sister had hardly spoken to me in our eight miserable days on the road. And though she had hovered about me like a bee on clover during my two days’ testimony before the Registry, taking every opportunity to warn me against demonstrating my tongue-block in front of my questioners, she had not visited me since the judgment.

  “I’ve a respectable contract, though it’s paid less than half what a Cartamandua of my skill should command.” Max pulled off his gloves one finger at a time. He fondled his grand ring, turning it to catch the light. “At least it’s active scouting and advance work, not scrawling maps. Bia’s taken the Cartamandua bent as well and is working for Patronn, inking his revisions or some such tedious task. Nilla has entered the eerie realms of divination. Two and two…so the family balance is left to you. Or do you still resist the call of your blood and the demands of discipline, presuming to some profession beyond the family bent? You’ve skills in so many areas, as I recall. Perhaps you’ve developed healing powers, or you’ve chosen to teach fertile young minds to read…”

  As he rattled off a list of scholarly and magical pursuits, I stood mute. Every response that leaped to mind would reap more punishments.

  He shoved the jeweled ring onto his thick finger and raised his eyes to meet my own, his smile as gleeful as that of a huntsman who bends his bow at a hobbled buck. “Come, tell me. What are you, Valen? You’ve surely not taken the bent for divination, else you’d hardly have let yourself be captured. But then again, why would I expect you might be competent at anything?”

  His were but a child’s barbs, no matter that they stung a nerve grown raw. If I refused to let him see more, perhaps he would win only a child’s pleasure from them. So I changed the subject. “I can’t imagine the twins grown enough to choose their bent. They were what…eleven last time I saw them…twelve? All ribbons and sulks.”

  Lips pursed in discontent, he settled back in his chair. “Our little sisters have grown up. Nilla is the beauty, as you might guess. Her looks got her a decent match—Luc de Galeno-Mercanti, a physician thrice her age who is contracted to the Duc of Avenus. Her divinations focus on her husband’s patients—a bit unsettling for them, I think. Perhaps now you’re back under discipline, the Registry will allow her to birth a child before her husband is wholly incapable. Bia’s minor rebellions ceased when she saw what happened to you—or perhaps when Matronn locked her in her room for half a year lest she follow your course. Patronn has not yet found a husband for her. Neither girl is happy with you. I’d recommend you stay out of their way. Easier in Nilla’s case, off in the damp of Morian as she is. But Bia—”

  “I’ll watch my back.”

  Lukas knelt to tie up my hose and lace my boots. I scarcely knew my younger sisters, Petronilla and Phoebia. They had been but wasps in the garden of family. Max and Thalassa had been the snake and the shrew. So what was the snake doing here?

  “Who is it holds your leash, Max? Your master must be headquartered in Palinur. Or has he loosed your golden chains so far as to permit random family visits?”

  “My master’s business has brought me to the city,” said Max. “Business of critical importance to Navronne’s future. I’ve no leave to discuss it—or him—with anyone save family. Yet I doubt such exceptions should be extended to you. You might be tempted to use the information to buy your way out of your unhappy lot. Only a sadist or a halfwit is going to consider a contract for a twelve-year recondeur. You know nothing of leashes, little brother. Not yet.”

  My brother rocked the chair back on its rear legs, his bulk overflowing it. From the time I shot past his height at age ten or so, Max had always managed to be sitting when we were together. And he had always enjoyed taunting me with the privileges he earned from being the dutiful elder, while I suffered the consequences of my errant nature. Evidently, nothing had changed.

  “Keep your secrets, ancieno,” I said. “I am, as ever, hopelessly unreliable when it comes to family loyalties.”

  Having finished with my boots, Lukas picked up a hinged contraption of delicately engraved silver from the small table beside my bed. With perfect patience he waited for me to kneel before him so he could slip it over my head. He could not completely hide his delight in this particular duty.

  “You must excuse me from any further conversation,” I said, as I dropped to my knees. I thought I had managed the encounter well, but it was impossible to hide bitterness at this point. Not with Max here.

  My brother lowered his chair legs to the floor with a jolt, watching goggle-eyed. “Ah, fires of Deunor, they have done you proud, Valen,” he whispered. “You, the lad who threw fits when locked in his bedchamber ten times the size of this room.”

  A delicate silver band three fingers wide encircled my throat. From it graceful silver coils stretched up my neck to support a mask that covered the left half of my face. This mask was not smooth, accommodating silk, but rigid silver that sealed my lips closed, blocked one nostril and one ear, and obscured on
e eye. Lukas latched the cursed thing at the back of my neck and fastened the thin metal strap that held it over my head. The Registry judge who had insisted on the mask had been most annoyed that in all my tedious accounting of my twelve uncontrolled years, I’d not implicated any ordinary he could hang.

  A grin materialized on Max’s broad face. “Does it close in on you, little brother? Does the world appear warped, with only one eye to observe it? Can you feel the restraint, the control? Spirits of night, how you must loathe this.”

  I ignored his baiting as I rose from the floor, fighting the urge to ram my head into the wall, practicing Brother Sebastian’s lessons to shift words from tongue to spirit and allow them to float, discorporate, into the ether. Lukas settled a garish yellow cape lined with ermine about my shoulders, adjusted its drape, and pinned it to the left with an amber brooch just as the cathedral bells struck nine.

  The key snicked in the door lock again. Two snow-dusted men in wine-colored cloaks and silk half masks entered, carrying deceptively plain bronze staves. Without meeting my brother’s eyes, I touched my fingertips to my forehead—half flesh, half metal—and bowed to Max and then to my jailers. The Registry men quickly silkbound my clenched hands—we were all quite experienced at this now—and I followed the two down six flights of stairs and out into the street.