by Carol Berg
He half carried, half dragged me to the palliasse, and threw the thin blanket over me, then grabbed his lamp and hurried out the door. Before his footsteps died away, I had fumbled my way back across the floor to the bucket, retching.
The rest of the day flowed together like wet ink on a page. As feeble daylight waxed and waned through a slot high on one cell wall, a string of visitors paraded through my cell—the abbot, Thalassa, Gildas, Thane Stearc, one at a time and then all together, talking and arguing too softly for me to hear. I could pay them no mind anyway. I was on my knees in the corner hunched over the fouled bucket, trying not to vomit up the entire contents of my skin. Brother Robierre questioned me between spasms, examining my tongue and fingernails, eyes and throat.
Even Gram came. He stood in the corner for a while, arms crossed, watching the others as they watched me. After a while he stepped close, laid his hand on my shoulder, and mumbled some incomprehensible sympathy.
As the Compline bell rang, I crawled back to my palliasse. Brother Robierre returned soon after. “The worst seems past,” he said, once he had verified that I was alive. “Were you trustworthy, we could have made you more comfortable in the infirmary.” I had never heard the kind infirmarian so frosty.
“No matter.” My raw throat made everything sound harsh.
He wiped my face with a damp rag and laid yet another blanket over me. “The abbot charged me to inform you of my findings. You were not poisoned. Anselm found naught in your spew or your blood. Your body tells me that you are entirely healthy. So this must be some condition of your blood. Perhaps sorcerers cannot tolerate blessed water. I’ve not treated your kind…purebloods…before.”
I shook my head and laughed. “Purebloods were never my kind.”
He did not see the humor. “Then perhaps it is the soul-poison of a man who would so betray the gifts of the good god and so endanger those who welcomed him as a brother. I will petition Iero to break your sinful spirit, Valen. Here—” With deft hands, he raised my head and emptied a vial of something strong and sweet down my gullet before I could protest. “Now you’ve settled a bit, this should ease your stomach.”
“I’m sorry, Brother,” I mumbled, dropping my head to the palliasse, feeling his draft sapping my remaining strength. “But you cannot possibly understand.”
He stood to go. “One more thing…Young Gerard was supposed to serve in the infirmary this evening, but the lad has not been seen all day. You ever took an interest in the boys, and someone told me you might know where he was off to.”
“No…sorry. Truly.”
The iron door clanged shut behind Robierre.
The day’s end bell had rung at least two hours since. That had been the last time I heard movement in the dark stairwell outside the door. Only two pureblood guards, Gildas had told me, and even purebloods had to sleep. Head pounding from holding off the effects of Brother Badger’s draft, I crept across the floor and touched my finger to the bottom of the door. Despite the doulon looming ever closer, I could not afford to hoard my magic. Flooding power into the spell, I drew my finger up and around in a sweeping arc on the stone beside the door, and back to the floor again. Then I grabbed my boots and crawled through the void into the stairwell. Still no sound.
The touch of open air on my cheek guided me up one narrow stair. I avoided brushing the wall. Hopes rising, I turned and slipped up the second course, bare feet soundless. One more turn, one more climb. I glimpsed a rectangular opening filled with stars…and then a squat silhouette blocked the opening.
“Do you think us fools, recondeur?”
I charged upward, barreling into the man, but at least three more bodies flung themselves on top of me as I tried to choke the life out of the one under my chest. It took them little time to wrestle me off their comrade, back down the stair, and into the cell. While two men held me down, two more folded my hands, fingertips interlocked and tucked inward, and bound them with silken cord, effectively precluding any application of magic. By the time they had unraveled my voiding spell and slammed the iron door behind them, the bells rang Matins.
Once I stopped fighting, Brother Robierre’s draft drugged me out of thought. The image of a gawky youth with a slow head and a ready grin quickly became tangled with that of riders in wine-colored cloaks and a naked man glowing with blue dragon sigils…
When the bells rang for Prime, the two purebloods arrived to release my hands and bring me a cup of small beer. They found me awake already, sitting on my palliasse, attempting to formulate some grand speech to throw at my captors or some scheme to get free. But thoughts of a dutiful boy who was not where he was expected had distracted me. Which made no kind of sense. Gerard had likely had enough of bells and prayers and righteousness.
The window slot yet gleamed gray when Thalassa swept into the cell impeccably coiffed and gowned—today in vermillion that set off her black hair and acorn-colored skin. Gold disks at her temples held back her veil and accented the thick black lines curving about her eyes. She dismissed her men to wait outside and close the door behind them. “Stand up.”
Sadly, my morning’s meditations had revealed naught to say worth the effort of irritating my throat and naught to do worth the trouble of remaining seated. As a boy I had fought until they forced me—to eat, to dress, to stand, to yield—the forcing far more horrid than whatever submission I had refused. Somehow I had lost that kind of resilience. I could not bear the thought of my sister’s pureblood lackeys laying hands on me again. I stood.
“A few rules before we go,” she said, nodding in approval at my wordless acquiescence. “No matter how you have abased yourself in these past years, you are pureblood, and you will remember your manners and discipline on this journey. The majority of our escort will be ordinaries, and you will maintain distance and detachment as you were taught. I see no need for you to speak at all, in fact, but I will leave you capable lest you fall ill again. I expect no repetition of your foolish escapade of last night. I would prefer to have left you unrestrained for the journey, but that is clearly impossible. Until you give me your word that you will not attempt escape, and convince me that you mean it, your hands will remain silkbound and your feet shackled.”
She paused, chin lifted, as if waiting for me to lash out. But this was not the day to fight. My knees felt like mud. I needed to eat. I closed my eyes, longing for her to vanish.
She didn’t, of course. “Punishment and restriction await you in Palinur, as you well know, but your behavior in the next days will influence my recommendations as to their severity and extent. And despite what you would prefer to believe, my opinion will carry weight with both the Registry and Patronn.”
“I have no doubt of that, Sinduria serena.” I bowed from the hip and touched my forehead with my fingertips, as was proper to a pureblood of superior rank—which was any one of them at present.
Clearly my intonation of her title and the proper female honorific struck her as insufficiently reverent. When I straightened up again, her full lips were tight, and her dark eyes sparked like struck flint. “You will submit, little brother. You have squandered your life and your talents. The time has come for you to focus your attention on something beyond your own pleasure. And we will begin that return to discipline now,” she said, and handed me a small piece of embroidered white silk.
I unfolded the fabric and stared at it for a moment, my fingers tingling with the minor magics woven into it. One edge straight and slightly stiffened, the rest irregularly shaped. One oval opening for the eye, its borders elaborately embroidered in white thread. Neatly sewn tucks to shape it around nose, mouth, and chin. A mask, or rather a half mask, for purebloods covered only one side of the face when appearing among ordinaries. The half mask was a symbol of our second self, the sorcerer within us that “ordinary” eyes could not see. The mask set us apart, enhanced our mystery, and gave us a certain anonymity among those we did not care to have know us. Only ones like Thalassa or the Gillarine pureblood, whose posit
ions mandated other facial decoration or required family dispensation, were exempt from the discipline of the mask.
“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 down, 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.