by Carol Berg
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 one 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.
Our boots crunched in the frozen muck. On this, the tenth day of my punishment, our route led to the Stonemasons’ District, a familiar haunt from my days working on the cathedral. There I was to spend the hours until sunset exhibited on a public platform, my foot shackled to a loop of iron.
Ten days, ten districts. Two more days to complete the round of the twelve districts of Palinur, and two additional days in the
Council District after that. I had reaped the two extra days for a breach of discipline—attempting to throttle my guards the first time they approached me with the silver mask. Since then, I had been a model of submission; the consideration of wearing the silver mask for one extra turn of the glass made me physically ill.
The frost bit at my exposed skin, and I hunched my shoulders, trying to induce the folds of the ugly yellow cape to cover my hands. The cold would be wicked on my immobilized fingers this morning. If only the wind would die down, my layers of fine clothes would keep the rest of me warm enough. Better than most of the poor devils in the streets.
My daily excursions through Palinur—the city I knew best in all the kingdom, a city of culture, beauty, and friendly, expansive people—had shocked me. Filth piled up in the streets. The residents’ faces gaunt and frightened. Diseased. Once-prosperous avenues were scarcely more than rubble, wooden houses burnt, stone ones picked apart. At least half of the great statues of the Hundred Heroes that ringed the palace precincts had been toppled and no one had bothered to set them upright. So many stones had been stolen from the low wall that joined the statues that it had the look of a snaggle-toothed jawbone. The richest city in the kingdom was no longer any different from the rest of Navronne.
As we hurried across the expanse of the central market, it seemed even smaller than yesterday. Seedy and grim, the pocardon or “little city” of shops and carts took up less than a quarter the area it had when I had first left home. Though a piper’s mournful tunes still quickened the air, the denizens of the market, who long ago would snatch an awestruck runaway from the street and lead him in a merry reel through the market stalls for the sheer joy of it, had vanished. And on this morning, the shoppers who had once laughed and made way for those dancers snarled at each other over blighted turnips and tufts of mud-caked wool—or glared at a tall freakish sorcerer in an ermine-lined cloak and silver half mask being herded through the lanes by two pureblood guards, and cursed him for squandering privileges they could never aspire to.
On this tenth morning the gaunt face of the royal city had taken on a more immediate tension—beyond the matter of starvation and hopelessness and unseasonable winter. From the moment we left the Registry tower, I had the same eerie sense as in the hours before a battle—the uneasy quiet, the fingers of fear reaching through skin and bone to grip the soul, the blurring of boundaries between earth and sky, between past and future. I could not shake the sense that Palinur, hitherto untouched by the war, was soon to bleed as well as starve.
Above the citadel that crowned the hilltop, Prince Perryn’s gold and purple pennant whipped and snapped in the sharp breeze alongside the white trilliot of Navronne. But Max was here on his contracted master’s business—the business of our prince’s mortal enemy.
The earth itself will not end, only the life we know—cities and towns and villages, plowing and planting. I had not believed in the lighthouse cabal and their talk of end times. But my days in the royal city had given me pause. We were not yet to the solstice—only days past the equinox—and ever-temperate Palinur was buried in snow and ice. The arrow of war was aimed at the heart of Navronne, which was the Heart of the World. What if Luviar was right?
Though it was an ordinary day for working, hardly anyone was abroad amid the mills and tool shops of the Stonemasons’ District. Small groups of men huddled together in alleyways, halting their conversations to stare as we passed. Grinding wheels and grimsaws stood idle in the workyards, winches and chains snared in unbroken ice beside piles of old scaffolding, rotted and tangled with dead weeds. Even the crowd of ragged boys who capered alongside us each morning, hurling taunts and frozen mud clots, numbered but twenty or so, less than half the size of the previous days. Only the pigeons seemed lighthearted, making free of the stoops, benches, and rooftops, fluttering upward in great swarms as our little procession marched through the gray morning.
We turned a corner into an open square, where all the streets of the Stonemasons’ District came together. Here, as in every district square, Aurellian pipes and conduits fed the district well—this one topped by a pyramid of rose marble. And here, as in every district square, a pillory and flogging post stood on a raised platform. In front of the empty pillory, the Registry had installed a stone block and surrounded it with a ring of iron stanchions linked by silken ropes.
Caphur, one of the pureblood attendants appointed by the Registry to oversee my punishment, jerked his head for me to climb the platform and mount the block. Though a youngish man of modest size, he had inordinately heavy jowls that grew prodigious crops of hair. When I was in place, he attached the shackle about my ankle to the iron loop affixed to the block. Then he and his partner, whose name I didn’t know, took their places outside the circle of stanchions.
The two purebloods would prevent curious ordinaries from touching me. As my Registry judges had emphasized so tediously, the purpose of this exercise was not physical harm, but “education by way of unseemly exposure to the common population.” That is, a reminder that the “simple” demand of submission to my family and the Registry protected me from such filth, ignorance, and drudgery as existed among ordinaries. That is, shame and humiliation. They had neither understood nor appreciated my laughter at this pomposity.
All in all, this aspect of my punishment could have been far worse. To stand outdoors was cold and uncomfortable, but far less painful than a lashing and, for one with my peculiarities, infinitely preferable to close confinement. A smirking Caphur had told me that the Sinduria had particularly recommended this exhibition as the best way to teach me the lessons I required. I needed to consider that. My sister knew very well of my particular terrors.
Across the square a pyramid-shaped block of granite marked a frowzy lane. Allowing my eyelid to sag, I imagined I could hear Frop the Fiddler sawing on his vielle at the Plug and Feathers, situated halfway down that lane, and feel the music that always set my feet dancing as I downed the taverner’s strong mead. A little farther down the lane and around the corner, squeezed between a tool grinder’s shed and a smithy, a man could indulge in a hot bath and a friendly whore at the Bucket Knot, my favorite sop-house, a warm and welcoming place.
Smiling to myself, I installed Elene’s face and lush figure in my imagining, whirling her to Frop’s music and hearing her laugh as she had on that morning at Caedmon’s Bridge. Ah, gods, what pleasure to touch her…to feel her naked warmth beneath me, her heart racing from the dance…
A stinging blow to my frozen flesh shattered my vision. The wind had whipped the hem of my heavy cape into my face. Elene had betrayed me. So no warmth to be had in visions either.
Unlike the first nine days, it took an hour for more than urchins and beggars to gather. But the chance to gape at a pureblood eventually overcame even the mysterious anxieties of the day. The yellow cape announced my offense. Scarred laborers hefting buckets or tool satchels, hollow-cheeked matrons clutching ragged children with haunted eyes, and shopkeepers wearing dirty aprons and furrowed brows drifted into the square like autumn leaves collecting under a maple, speculating aloud as to my identity, my history, my magical talents, and my future, knowing they would never be told such mysteries. They were likely wondering if the silent guards were going to do anything more with me. Likely hoping for something interesting, such as a nice flogging or maiming.
I kept my back straight and my unblocked eye open and focused forward as was required of me. My exposed right cheek stung with the cold. Though the mask shielded the left cheek from the wind, the silver chilled quickly, cooling the sweat that had formed beneath it as we walked. Soon the masked half of my face grew colder than the other, as if encased in ice that penetrated my flesh and froze my bones, as if knives mounted on the inside of the metal half face lacerated my cheek and brow.
As the ragamuffins spat and lobbed mud balls at my back without interference from the masked guards, the people grew bold with their comments: Soul-dead…demon-cursed…real silver…Has he fl
esh under the metal, Mam? That fur’s no sheep’s coat nor rabbit’s…Don’t have to work…Don’t even have to fight, they don’t…Everything’s given…god-given…while we starve. Never saw one of ’em so tall. He vomited his gift right back at the Sky Lord’s feet…their cocks metal, too? Cover a pureblood female and their Registry’ll cut off your cock. Spat on the Gehoum…Should burn all them as betray the Powers…Throw ’im in the river with that mask and he’ll sink…meet the gods he’s cursed… recondeur…traitor… As if I could not hear them. As if I stood somewhere far distant behind a barricade of silver.
Afternoon brought more snow and new waves of muted gossip that rippled through the assembly. Forbidden to turn my head so my exposed ear might hear better, I heard naught of the reports.
As evening approached, my neck and shoulders ached miserably. My fingers felt dead. My nose ran unceasingly, stimulating a subtle panic that I would soon be unable to breathe. Despite my layers, I could not control my shivering. My exposed eye welled with tears from the bitter wind, and no amount of blinking could clear it, threatening my sole occupation. I derived some amusement from observing the odd folk who came to gawk at me, those like the tall, slender man in a sky-blue tunic who stood apart at the back of the crowd, his long hair plaited with green ribbons. He must enjoy spectacles; he had come every day.
A small, purposeful shift in the increasingly restive crowd signaled a new arrival making his way to the front. He soon stood immediately in front of me, a small person cloaked in black. Holy mother…I blinked rapidly and risked a reprimand by swiping my upper arm across my eye. The man wore a cowl! He lifted his hood just enough that he could see as high as my face, allowing me to glimpse his own odd features that looked as if they were ready to slide off his chin. Brother Victor.
Great merciful Iero, they’d come to rescue me! Somewhere under his scapular would be an ax to hack the chains away. I strained to see through the flurries and gloom. Perhaps Gildas was here…or Stearc. The Evanori warrior could take on Caphur and his friend. Surely…My hands trembled in their unyielding wrappings. My blind eye leaked tears unrelated to the cold. Buck up, you great ox! Why just now at the verge of freedom did the loathsome horror of this captivity threaten to undo me?