by Carol Berg
“His Grace of Evanore has maintained neutrality throughout this petty dispute, sir knight,” said Voushanti, his words as crystal hard as the icicles dangling from the sagging balconies. “And he expects his officials to move unhindered throughout Navronne as they have since his father’s death. Perhaps this…warrior…at your side does not comprehend the protocols of royalty or that my master’s displeasure is not incurred lightly, even by his royal brothers or their favored priestesses.”
A faint green luminescence rose from Voushanti’s sword and from the shipped lances of his own four warriors. The Moriangi shifted backward, so perhaps more eyes than mine saw it.
“Lord Voushanti, m-my apologies.” The young knight held his ground beside the woman, though his teeth rattled like the Ardran drums as he waved his men backward. “Pass, as you will.”
“Blasphemous weakling!” The woman hung back as the lancers marched away. Then she wrenched her mount’s head around and vanished behind them into the smoke and gloom.
“Quickly! This way,” said Voushanti, pointing down an alley scarce wide enough for his warhorse. “She’ll set an ambush.”
He led us through the maze of broken streets and crumbling arches under the causeway. These remnants of some early incarnation of Palinur had been exposed when the new palace approach was built by the Aurellians. In normal times the narrow, stinking lanes served as a haven for thieves, cutpurses, and very large rats.
We emerged from the ancient warren into the wide boulevards of the Council District, streets of small, elegant palaces favored by the king’s household, royal relatives, high-ranking clerics, as well as the foreign embassies that had sat abandoned since Eodward’s death. Just ahead of us, a party of six or eight Moriangi troopers rammed a hitchpost into the door of a fine house, bursting it open in a shower of splinters.
A little farther down the street, another party, blazoned with scarlet and blue, dragged a writhing man from a house and threw him onto the pavement next to several mortally still swordsmen. A woman in servants’ garb stood watching. Calm. Quiet. The soldiers closed in around the man and laid into him with clubs and feet. As his screams tore the air, the serving woman tied an orange scarf about her head and strolled away. I could not but wonder how many Harrowers served in wealthy houses, silent, deferent, behind the wards that families like mine believed impregnable.
Another turning took us out of the din and into a muddy back lane between gated walls where servants and delivery carts would travel on better days. The only sounds in the dim alley were the breathing of our own beasts and the jingle of harness. At the second or third break in the wall, a tall gate of black iron swung open soundlessly. No grind of gears or squall of hinges accompanied the closing, once we had passed inside it. My clammy skin itched beneath the layers of wool, silk, and fur.
The back of the house stood bleak and unwelcoming. Small windows pocked the tall gray wall, stained with rust and soot about gutters and empty torch brackets. A stone kitchen house lurked dark and shuttered, its chimneys cold. An empty cart had been shoved into a corner of the yard. Dead leaves and dirty snow filled watering troughs. I lowered my eyes, afraid of what phantasms I might see lurking in these shadows.
Mardane Voushanti dropped lightly from his saddle and waved a gloved hand at me. “Get him down.”
The warriors released the horse and me from our unhappy partnership. When one of the men knelt to reshackle my ankles, I shook my head frantically and pounded my bundled hands on his shoulders. But for the silver mask that forbade speech, I would have abandoned all pride and begged him not. To face this life…this master…bound and shackled…fear came near choking me. The lock clicked shut. Two of the warriors grabbed my arms and almost carried me down a short flight of steps into a musty corridor. Everyone was in a hurry, and neither my mind nor my feet could keep the pace.
We threaded a maze of empty storerooms, of laundry rooms furnished with rusting tubs and a few stiff rags hung on suspended frames, past coal bins and linen rooms that smelled of moldy herbs. From the servants’ halls, we emerged into a grand foyer, poorly lit and shrouded with cobwebs and dust.
Voushanti halted before a tall door. Every finger’s breadth of the dark wood had been carved with beasts and symbols and set with slips of gold and chips of gemstones. Its centerpiece was a snarling wolf with smoldering garnets for its eyes.
“A warning, pureblood.” The mardane gripped a strap of the metal mask and pulled my face close to his, forcing me to look into his eyes…black, bottomless, one spark of red fire at the center, chilling me to the marrow. No past, no future in those eyes. “His Grace dislikes liars and gaping fools. Remember it.” As if I weren’t rattled enough already. When he looked away, I almost sobbed in gratitude.
One of the warriors dragged open the door. Another shoved at my back. I stepped through, trying to hold my head high without falling on my face.
The cavernous room was as dark as a well of tar. A few threads of gray sketched tall narrow windows, but heavy draperies barred what modest illumination the overcast morning might provide. Across the room lurked the wolf from the door, grown huge, its fist-sized eyes of garnet pulsing with life. I stepped back, blinking in dismay. But this phantasm was no more than pulsing coals in a cavernous hearth.
No sooner had I exhaled than a streak of blackness darted between my legs. Claws scrabbled on wood. Then, slightly above my head, disembodied in the dark, no wolf, but a cat blinked—its yellow eyes sharp and gleaming like faceted citrine. My sluggish heart thrummed like the Ardran drums. Saints and angels, fool, take hold of your mind.
Voushanti’s hauberk gleamed in the crimson glow as he tossed a rolled parchment on a table and bowed in the direction of the most profound darkness in all the gloom, the end of the room to our right. “The pureblood, Cartamandua-Celestine, Your Highness. The contract is in order. He is your bound servant until the last breath departs his lungs.”
The warmth of the gleaming coals did not touch me outside or in. A lung-frosting chill and a faint medicinal odor pervaded the room. I needed to bow to him. Curse the damnable doulon. Why could I not gather my senses? Of all days to have this horrid reaction. Of all hours. I fought my roiling belly, pressed my fingers to my forehead, and concentrated on keeping my knees steady as I inclined my back. After a suitable interval, I rose again…slowly…using a glimmer of red on the wood floor as a touchstone to prevent my spinning head losing all orientation.
I could manage this. A thousand times I had passed myself off as sober when muddleheaded with mead.
First, stop the damnable shivering. The silver mask would reveal my tremors even in the minimal light of the dying fire. I could allow him to think me wary and disciplined, or carefree and ill behaved, but he must not think me weak or afraid. My future…my freedom…depended on carving out a position in this household, a position of respect if I could manage it. Yet here I was, near drooling. I inhaled, deep and slow, and forced my body rigid.
“Have you presented his task?” Low. Clear. Large and deep. Larger than the room itself. Rumbles and echoes and nuances beyond hearing. Not human…
I shook my head sharply, trying to stifle fear with reason. Of course he was human. Somewhere in that unnatural dark were a man’s head, body, limbs, eyes. Crippled, so I had heard. Deformed. Surely he was but an ugly sorcerer with ugly habits—like members of my family. His eyes would be watching me. I summoned every discipline I knew. My soul would not go easy into his grasp.
Voushanti clasped his hands at his back in a military rest. “My first concern was getting him here safely, my lord. The streets worsen by the hour. I knew you wished to interview him before his assignment. Perhaps you even wish to give the commands your—”
“Do as I commanded you, Mardane.” The voice was a lash.
The mardane bristled, but swiveled to address me. “Your first duty for your new master will be to locate two prisoners in whom he has an interest. The two were taken from their beds earlier today, but are held neith
er in palace dungeons nor city jails. Tracking a person from a known location should be a minor exercise for one of your bloodline—even one minimally trained, as we understand you to be. Our lord prince will accept no excuses for failure. We shall remove your restraints, of course, and provide you garments less noticeable. Do you comprehend?”
Making sure not to look at Voushanti’s dreadful face, I bowed very slightly in acknowledgment. My mind raced—or at least plodded as fast as was possible through knee-deep mud. Freeing prisoners…not so bad a task as I’d feared. And I was to be loose in Palinur, my hands unbound. I knew a thousand hiding places…
A whipcrack split the murk, a fiery lash encircling my ankles. The shackles shattered into pieces and clattered to the floor. The hobble chain dropped with a loud clank, almost stopping my heart.
The half-faced Evanori stood to one side, inspecting my cooling ankles, his hands clasped in relaxed unconcern behind his back. When his unsettling gaze slid upward, expectant, I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid even to breathe. This whip was not leather, but magic, the hand that wielded it hidden in the darkness.
Another whipcrack. I bit my tongue so as not to cry out. This time the fire encircled my neck and the top of my head, as the metal neck and head straps broke away and the silver mask clattered to the floor. Quickly, I lifted my bound hands and stretched them well away from my belly.
This time the bolt of power flew silently. The air shivered as if a giant sword had whisked by me, its speed and ferocity making it invisible. I blinked. The silken bindings stretched and drooped from my fingers, then frayed into threads of gossamer that floated to the floor. Free!
But the mardane quickly gripped my arm and shoulder in such fashion that he could lay me flat should I blink wrongly. My moment’s exaltation snapped like a dry twig. The unruined half of his face twisted slightly. “It is certainly as you surmised, my lord. His nature is true. The rebellious spirit does not forsake him.”
“Erase any thought of escape from your mind, Magnus Valentia,” breathed the voice from the shadows. “Do not think I cannot reconstruct these restraints or provide more…restrictive…ones should they prove necessary. Though obedience is required by your contract, I know you disdain the rules of your kind, as well as the ordinary courtesies of honorable men.”
I tried to reclaim some dignity in word if not posture. “My word, given unreserved, is inviolate, Lord. But I do not honor promises given by others in my name.”
“Fair enough. So you will understand why we hold surety for your good behavior.”
The door opened, and one of my escorts led in a prisoner. His slender wrists were bound behind him and silk scarves shuttered his eyes and mouth. A tiny sound issued from his throat. Not a sob. Not a wail. Only the choking sound of terror tight reined, of constricted throat and bound heart, of determined courage. Jullian.
“Damnable cowards!” I yelled, rage exploding from my being’s core. “What kind of lord…what kind of man…holds a child hostage? How dare you—?”
Voushanti deftly shifted his grip, snaring my right arm in a shoulder lock, bending my neck forward so forcefully I thought it must snap.
“I do only what is necessary to compel your obedience,” said the voice from the darkness, cold and deep. “Fulfill your contract, and the lad will survive…this day.”
I wrenched free of the mardane and dropped to my knees beside the boy. Fear and anger flailed the cotton wool within my skull, so that I could scarcely articulate words. They had brutalized this boy on my account. “Jullian, it’s Valen here. Have they hurt you?”
The boy shook his head sharply.
“His safety is in your hands, pureblood,” said Voushanti, his voice stark as midwinter.
In my hands. Indeed. I gathered the rigid boy close, turning him until his back lay against my chest, laying one hand on his ruddy hair and one hand on his breast. His heart fluttered like a rabbit’s throat. “I want him free.”
Voushanti snapped, “You have no—”
“Free and healthy as he is right now,” I barked into the midnight where the master lurked, ignoring the treacherous servant. “You can throw me in a pit dungeon and lock the trap for a thousand years before I allow him to be your pawn.” I could not consider complexities or strategies, but only a certainty that swelled greater than the doulon craving—this outrage could not happen. “Your word, Lord Prince, or I do nothing for you ever and your contract gold is wasted.”
“Free, then, and unharmed, once today’s task is done.” The voice breathed malice that settled like a cold snake alongside my spine. “But not you, pureblood. Not ever. You claim your given word is inviolable. So swear to me of your own will—without reservation—that you will not run. Prove it this day, and you will have my word in exchange: I will not ever use the boy against you.”
Good that I could not hold more than one thought in my head at a time, that I was too dull witted to weigh the balance of this bargain. Yet he was not asking an oath of obedience. Only submission. I spun Jullian around to face me and gripped his narrow shoulders, quickly before I could reconsider.
“I vowed to protect you, Archangel. Do you remember? And so I’ll do. My master is noble Eodward’s son, thus we must assume he is a man of his word as well. So have courage and say your prayers. While I’m off doing his bidding, you can practice your Aurellian verbs, for I know you have difficulty with them. Teneo, teneas, teneat…teneamus… eh?”
The boy’s chin lifted ever so slightly. And then he nodded.
I rose and faced the massive dark in the corner of the room. How does a man yield his lifeblood willing, slit a vein and watch the scarlet flood sap his strength and sentience, silence the music of the world, still his feet? Madness—this foggy mantle the doulon had laid over me that allowed naught of sense, only anger to burn through—that was the only explanation. I bent one knee, inclined my back, and touched my fingertips to my forehead. “You have my word, lord prince. I will not run. Not ever.”
“Without reservation?”
“Without reservation.”
“Very well, then! Be on your way.”
Voushanti bowed to his lord, pulled me to my feet, and hurried me out of the room. “I will outline your morning’s task as we go,” he said when the door had closed behind us. “Speed is of the essence…”
Chapter 28
Blood is unique. Pureblood families insist that each child’s blood is identical either to the father’s or the mother’s, and that the only variance that prevents one of us growing into an exact copy of that parent is malleable “nature.” But those purebloods gifted to follow routes and tracks must surely know better—that blood bears the imprint of a singular being who loves and hates and quivers in terror, who sings psalms or grows parsnips or strips pigs—because blood lays down an excellent, unmistakable path to its source.
Though I had no idea whose blood it was, the clotted mess in the sooty, brick-paved courtyard was sufficient to trigger a magical response when I applied my mind to the problem. If only I had more mind.
“Which way?” demanded Voushanti, his voice muffled by the hood that draped his mutilated face. His hand encircled my upper arm with the grip of a pawnbroker holding his last citré. The engravings on his wide gold wristband seemed to writhe in nauseating rhythm with my pulse. “Where were they taken? A month you’ve squatted here staring at this puddle. We’ve—”
“—no time. I know that.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to focus on the whereabouts of the unnamed captive whose blood had been so callously shed in this deserted yard. But as quickly as the route to his present location took shape in my mind, the lines and turnings faded again, as if I’d drawn them in breath frost on a window glass. Twice more in the past hour on our way through the chaotic streets of Palinur, I’d felt the shattering explosion of the doulon and the almost simultaneous disintegration of sense. My mind was in tatters. “West, I think. Toward Riie Doloure. There’s an old fortress…”
Was th
is a true impression or was it only that talk of missing prisoners recalled a tale I’d once heard about a private jail? Aurellians had inflicted cruel torments on Navron prisoners, not allowing guilt or justice to interfere with retribution, and certain Navron nobles rued the day King Eodward had proscribed such practices. A young thief had once told me of his escape from a grim lockup such men used for torturing “grudge prisoners”—those who bore their especial ire or contempt. Determined to spread word of the dread place before he could be recaptured, the youth had spat out his gruesome story, clutching his burnt, empty wrists to his belly while a fellow vagabond dressed the poor sod’s whip-gouged back with goose fat. I’d had no other comfort to offer a lad of fifteen, facing life with no hands.
“Riie Doloure—are you sure?”
I shook my head to clear it and pressed my palms to the pavement beside the dark sticky pool. Icy water dripped on my hands from the cornice that sheltered the unseemly blotch. Hold the lines this time. Ink them on your senses. The Bastard Prince has Jullian until this task is done. The traces were so faint. Brick and cobbles did not hold impressions like bare earth. And Palinur bled from every pore this day, confusing me even more. Time crawled by, stretched like a waking cat, and then sagged into a filthy puddle. “Riie Doloure. Yes.”
Voushanti dragged me up and shoved me past broken statuary and trampled herb beds toward an elaborate iron gate dangling from one hinge. An aingerou, tucked under the brick arch, spat snowmelt onto the uneven cobbles. I tried to step over the puddle but misjudged the distance and stumbled right into it. Slush seeped into my boot.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Voushanti, jerking me through the gate and into the deserted lane. “Your family vouched you were in good health. Said you’d never had so much as a boil on your bum in your life. Are you drunk?”
“No sleep,” I said, hurrying alongside him, grateful I was free of shackles and mask at least. “No food. Doesn’t promote my best work. I’ll not warrant—”