by Carol Berg
Elene’s hood covered her hair, and she did not speak as she marched away. Brother Butcher watched from the doorway as I followed meekly after her.
“Good day, Squire Corin,” I whispered from under my own hood as we hurried past sheep pens and pig wallows. “I certainly hope your return to Gillarine was more fragrant than mine.”
“The abbot is always welcoming, though we don’t come here for the hospitality.” Her tone smacked far too much of serious affairs.
“Well, of course, you don’t. Though I don’t see that purposeful misery will solve any of the world’s problems, either. Which leads me to ask…”
She tripped briskly up the steps that crossed the low wall dividing the abbey’s outer and inner courts, and rather than take the eight steps down, she jumped straight to the ground, as nimble as a cat. I jumped as well, which left me feeling something like a mast with billowing sails, as my gown caught the air. My thigh did not even twinge when I landed.
I paused for a moment and watched her walk ahead toward the lay brothers’ yard and the brewhouse, the sight of her an antidote to my dogging melancholy. She moved like a dancer or a juggler, not frail or bony, but well muscled, her back as solid and well formed as her front. A most pleasing view, though truly it seemed very odd to have the luxury of examining a woman in breeches and jupon while I traipsed behind her in skirts.
She peered over her shoulder. Best get my mind back to business. We would soon be in the inner precincts where even quiet conversation could be noticed and overheard. Two full strides and I caught up with her.
“…which leads me to ask, Is someone ever going to tell me what is coming, so I can decide whether to keep watch upward to see the bolt of fire from heaven or downward to see the ground open underneath me? Will the world end in fire or ice, Squire Corin? Though I have my own guess as to that.” I shivered as the damp wind blew off the river, smelling of dead fish.
She slowed just a bit. “I told them they ought to be honest with you. But my father won’t hear of it, because—”
“—because he heard I had an arrow wound in the back. He despises me as a coward, and thus believes me incapable of keeping secrets.”
“For Abbot Luviar to be dismissed for sheltering a deserter would be disastrous to our cause. But you’ve proven yourself, so you deserve to hear the truth.” She planted herself in front of me, hands on her hips. “The earth itself will not end, only the life we know—cities and towns and villages, plowing and planting. Herds are dying. Famine and disease will bring barbarians, not just Hansker, who will surely come first, but wilder folk from the north and west. Yet they, too, will lose all they have. Summer will vanish, and, in the struggle to survive, men will forget books and tools and art and all the things we’ve learned in centuries. The Harrowers will get what they want. We will see the end times, but with no blessed ending in heaven.”
She believed this quite sincerely. I could tease no further. “How do you know? How do they know? Yes, the weather is foul, the war cruel, sickness rampant, yet we survive. Navronne has suffered before. Nobles are always underestimating the strength of common folk. What’s different this time?”
“Where are the monks, Brother? Where are the students who once came to Gillarine for schooling—fifty in my father’s time, with more hoping to come? How many villages lie ruined like those between here and Caedmon’s Bridge? Where are the grapes of Ardra or the summer fruits of the river country or Evanore’s wild boar that sustained my ancestors when the Aurellians forced them to live in caves like beasts? People abandon faith and paint their foreheads with dung. We don’t know why our downfall will happen. Everyone has a theory. Brother Victor thinks our present cycle of history just happens to be worse than similar ones of the past. Abbot Luviar believes that some dread event has caused a rip in the binding of earth and heaven. But those of the cabal are men and women of intelligence, wisdom, and a vision that is broader than one abbey or one kingdom or one faith. Besides, it has all been seen by a friend of my father’s. Now, come. They’re waiting for you.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I said, as I caught up to her. “I won’t betray you—any of you. I’m actually quite proficient at keeping secrets.”
She didn’t respond. As I considered all she’d told me, one word rose from her tale like a youthful blotch on a girl’s clear skin.
“Elene…”
She picked up the pace through the passage between the granary and the brewhouse, where the cloying smell of roasting barley was so thick it could choke a man.
“Corin…”
We strode across the guesthouse yard where I had first glimpsed her face. An exposed place. Three men in green livery approached the guesthouse from the direction of the stables. Anyone could pop out of the door or the five different passages that opened on the yard or could peer out of the myriad windows of the house.
But the blemish had swelled into a boil, and despite the risk of being overheard, I laid a hand on Elene’s shoulder as she grasped the brass door handle. “Seen…you mean foreseen, as by a pureblood diviner?”
She dragged the heavy door open and slipped out from under my hand before she answered, else I might not have barged into the columned atrium after her in full view of the group in the guesthouse parlor. By the time she said, “Yes,” it was too late.
As Brother Victor passed around a tray of steaming cups, and Gram worked at a writing table, a short, robust woman robed in mauve and blue silk stood talking with Abbot Luviar, Brother Gildas, and Thane Stearc. Her heavy black hair had been twisted and wound into a great loop, fixed to the back of her head with a gold fan, spread like a peacock’s tail. The blue, green, and gold sprawl of interlocking beads on her ample breast proclaimed her a Sinduria—a high priestess of the elder gods. The thick stripes of kohl outlining her eyes and the eyes graven on her silver bracelets, set with pupils of opal and lapis, proclaimed her a pureblood diviner. And her shock when she saw me, quickly followed by amusement, quickly followed by triumph and contempt, proclaimed her my elder sister.
She raised her finger and pointed through the parlor doorway straight at me.
“Oh, Deunor’s fire, Lassa, don’t. Please don’t.” My voice echoed like frogs rasping in the fine antechamber.
But she was a Cartamandua, and so did my twelve years of freedom end with her one contemptuous word. “Recondeur.”
Chapter 19
“Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine…a Karish monk. What divination could have prepared me for this?” Thalassa’s laughter left her breathless. “Have you been driven out of every other house in Navronne in only twelve years, little brother? Or have you conquered every woman’s heart with your everlasting charm, so that the only ones left to share your bed are celibate old men and guileless boys? Do these monks know what you are?”
The others had come out of the parlor and now stood in an awkward half circle ten paces from me, gawking.
“I have lived a life of my own choosing,” I said, closing my eyes so I could no longer see Elene, clapping a hand to her mouth, or Brother Victor, his odd features so eloquent in condemnation, or Gram, peering at me curiously, as if I were something not quite human. “I have bound myself where I would and walked away when I would—”
“—and great rewards it has brought you. I can see and smell. But I’ll not believe you are here because you have chosen a life of purity and service. Even this corrupt and failing world has not changed so much. I’d advise you to check your valuables, Luviar. And look to your daughter, Lord Stearc. Valen bedded every serving girl and lad in Palinur before he was fifteen. Evidently he can breathe on a woman and set her fawning—maybe men, too. We were never able to prove he does it with magic.”
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.