by Carol Berg
I recalled the abbot’s warning: Once the succession was settled, Bayard’s hammer would fall swiftly on those who had not supported him wholeheartedly. And Thalassa, who had tied herself to conspirators who insisted that the world’s survival trumped the rivalries of princes or clergy, sat directly in that hammer’s path. By allowing me to hear this news, she had—knowingly and deliberately—laid a weapon in my hand. Were I ever to find a way around her tongue-block, I might sell her secret, perhaps buy myself some consideration in royal circles. Was she so confident in her spellmaking? Or did she believe my new master would assure I had no such opportunity? Or was she telling me something altogether different?
Max brandished a fist-sized portion of duck on his knife. “Are you surprised at your Karish friends’ perfidy, Valen?” He grinned at me. “Perhaps your sojourn in the abbey gave you a taste for adult intrigue instead of childish tantrums.”
“Valen remains eternally self-absorbed,” said Thalassa, reverting to her lighter tone, as if I were not present. “His head is empty, his most important concerns his belly and his male endowments.” She nodded to my mother as if to apologize for so indelicate a reference. “I doubt he holds to a single monkish virtue. Even if he knew aught of serious matters of the world, he’d not lift a finger to involve himself.”
Why was it that my sister’s unrelenting barbs brought to mind the Abbot of Gillarine and his admonitions to obedience, his lessons about honor and the need to divert personal interest and loyalty to higher purpose? Lassa was a member of Luviar’s circle—those who had committed their lives to the purpose that gods worth our honoring did not mandate terror or ignorance or unthinking subservience. I watched my elder sister as she picked at her meal and sparred with Max, and confessed that I did not know her as well as I thought I did.
“Never saw anyone so sly as that abbot.” Max devoured another bite of duck and distracted me from rethinking Thalassa’s motives. “Luviar, is that his name? Prince Bayard was dreadfully unhappy to learn the fellow allowed Perryn to sneak off with the hierarch. The Karish eunuch will pay for that bit of chicanery. I’m not so happy with him either. Sullied my reputation with that little vanishing trick, he did. I’ll find out how he hid the simpering snake in that monk-house if I must strip off his holy robes and dangle him over a bonfire to do it. If you know the secret, Valen, I might find it in my heart to pour that cup of wine down your throat! Tell me, little brother, have you ever had such a sober month since you gave up Matronn’s tit?”
I shrugged. As Max leaned over and smacked a great kiss on Matronn’s hollow cheek, I glanced at Thalassa to see her reaction to Max’s talk of the abbot. Even considering Max’s penchant for exaggeration, I found his words disturbing. But my sister ignored us all as she spooned honey from a dish and dribbled it on a piece of bread. She handed it across to my mother, who had eaten nothing all evening.
While Max preened and related grand tales of the victory at Wroling, I closed my eyes and tried to plan my next move. Which was, of course, entirely impossible. Every scheme died with the same thought: a lifetime contract with a stranger who could restrain me as he saw fit, who could decree that I would never again see the light of day, who could prevent me ever speaking to another human being if I did not track his enemies or poison his wife or work whatever other magic he required of me. I would live without recourse. Without protection. Bound. Saints and angels, preserve me. I dragged my ragged thoughts back to the present before I vomited in my empty plate.
“…and that was the very same Karish house where Valen was hiding?” said Bia. “What strange fortune!”
“If I’d only known,” said Max, cocking his head thoughtfully and narrowing his eyes at me. “I could have dragged him back here weeks ago. Were it anyone but Valen, I might wonder whether he was caught up with Luviar’s treasonous games.”
“I’ve heard Bayard will take control of Palinur before morning,” said my father. “The Registry has advised us all to strengthen our house wards to fend off this Harrower rabble. Prince Osriel is expected in the city as well.” He tore at a dried fig with his teeth. He was relishing this occasion.
Max licked his fingers, smirking. “Did I mention Evanori gold? The Bastard Prince cannot squat atop such treasure any longer, playing his nasty little games and scaring children. He must acknowledge Bayard as his king or prepare to face his wrath.”
“Osriel is an abomination,” said Thalassa with disgust.
My mother, who had been emptying her wineglass with regularity and trying unsuccessfully to avoid looking at me, shuddered and drew her mantle close. Her dull gaze flicked to me again. “Claudio,” she whispered, tilting her head toward my father, her kohl-ringed eyes sunken, her hollow cheeks paler than ever, “I’ve Seen this Osriel, who steals the souls of the dead. He craves the life of angels, but is forever barred from their realm.”
As happened every time my mother spoke the words “I’ve Seen” in just that way, the room took on a certain tomblike staleness, and the candle flames dimmed as though viewed through smoked glass. Creeping fingers tickled my spine, as they did whenever events recalled the doom of blood and water and ice she had once spoken for me.
Lassa laid down her knife and stared at my mother, as if to glean the wholeness of the vision with her own talent. Max shuddered and tossed another cup of wine down his gullet, averting his eyes.
My father alone remained exempt from the effects of my mother’s pronouncements. Dabbing at his mouth with a square of linen, he savored Max’s and Thalassa’s reactions with the same gusto he chewed his meat. “Let Thalassa worry about the Bastard’s soul,” he said. “Think. Osriel surely wishes to examine this purported writ of Eodward’s will. Perhaps even challenge it. I’ve heard he possesses Tobrecan’s copy, though he has never produced it. No wonder that, if Bayard’s name is cited. It’s likely long burned.” Patronn smiled with bloodless lips. “If Bayard can persuade Osriel the writ is sound and that alliance is in his best interest, the war is over. We shall all prosper, even—”
“Valen?” The throaty whisper came from the direction of the kitchen door, along with a sneaking giggle. “My boy come home? My good lad grown? Why hast thou kept this news from me, Claudio?”
“Raphus! Petro! Where are you?” bellowed my father, jumping to his feet. “Get the madman out of here!”
My grandfather hobbled quickly across the tile floor, astonishingly spry for a man of more than eighty summers. A green-and-yellow patterned robe flapped over stained tunic and loose trousers. Food was the most pleasant of the likely substances clotting his matted white hair and beard. A fetid stench preceded him.
My mother recoiled and clapped a lace handkerchief across her mouth and nose as he planted a kiss on her cheek. Max wrinkled his nose and sucked at his wine cup when my grandfather grabbed a wad of his hair and jiggled his head affectionately. Bia, rigid, stared down at her plate as if to pretend a madman wasn’t patting her coiled braids. But even as he touched the others, his bright mad eyes fixed on me.
“Where hast thou been, boy? Hiding, I think. Good. Good. How old be thou, Valen? How old? Come now, tell me. Thou shouldst be close to the day.”
“Seven-and-twenty, Capatronn,” I said, bile in my mouth. “And how old are you? Too old to be living, I think. Too wicked to be living, certainly.”
He chortled gleefully and clapped his hands as he rounded the end of the table, his bare feet attempting a dance step. I stared at the libation bowl, the etched bronze glinting sharply in the candlelight. I sought the scent of wine instead of my grandfather’s reek and tried to imagine it was dulling my senses…dulling memory, hatred, and revulsion.
“Wicked certainly. Yes. But I’ve told no secrets, and they’ve not found thee, have they, boy?”
My father charged through the door to the kitchen, still shouting for my grandfather’s pureblood caretakers. The other servants who cowered in the shadows—ordinaries—were not permitted “adversarial contact” with any pureblood. Thus they could not
wrestle my grandfather back to his room. Silos was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile my grandfather crept up behind me and whispered in my ear as he had always done, lapsing in and out of Aurellian and Navron. “We’ll show them, boy. Prasima—how long till thy birthday? Claudio keeps me shut away, so I know not the day or season. Tell me. Prasima coteré—how long till thou’rt free forever?”
“You’re too late, Capatronn,” I said. I did not whisper, but held up my silkbound hands so he could see. “They found me. And I doubt I’ll ever be free again.” But I would. I would, else I’d be dead or as mad as he was.
“Shhh…” He pawed at my shoulders, stroked my arms, and pried at my chin, trying to turn my face toward his. “All grown up now. Tall, aren’t thou? Not like these dull fools. I knew it. Tall and beautiful…so far above. Stand up and show me. But how long till eight-and-twenty? On that day thou shalt be free of them forever. Tell me.” He hammered his fist on my shoulder. “Tell me, Valen. I’ve kept thee free. Given everything for thee alone. How long?”
Somehow, seeing him in the flesh sapped my fury. However hateful and cruel the old gatzé had once been, he was only mad now, echoing this old nonsense in my ear. His dementia had ever been fixed on my birthdays. “Ten…twelve…weeks until my birthday, I think.”
He wrapped his arms around me from the back as if to heave me up. He was still strong. “Stand up, boy. Stand up and let me see. So cruel…so cold…they despise any who are not like them in all ways. But they’ll never break thee. I saw to it.”
“Leave me be, Capatronn,” I said in exasperation more than anger. “Live or die as you will, old man, but just leave me be. You never took me away. You never set me free. I had to do it all myself, but I failed.”
I shifted around to face him as a tired man instead of a defiant child, so that this once in all my life he might believe what I said. “I don’t want your—”
My mouth hung open, paralyzed in the moment. The insult I was poised to throw died unspoken.
My grandfather’s face was a landscape of suffering, creased with pain and scarred with madness, his skin rough and tattered like leather left to rot. He had chewed his lips raw. And his eyes…Lord of the Sky, I had never looked so close…so deep…coal black and searingly hot, a damned soul gazing out from the maw of hell, begging for one word of consolation…filling with tears even as he bobbed his head like a mummer’s puppet.
“Ah, Clyste,” he whispered, touching my cheek with a dry trembling finger. “Not even for thee could I allow it.”
Two brawny men dragged him away before I could react, before I could ask what he meant or why he invoked that name, a name perched on the edge of memory and mystery.
“Wait!” I said. But the caretakers were already bustling him out the door.
“What was all that?” asked Max. “He wants to throw another party for your birthday?”
“Yes,” I said, struggling not to reveal that I was as bewildered as I had ever been in my life. “Perhaps he thinks I’ll turn into something useful when my years are eight-and-twenty—the perfection of seven times the magical balance of four.”
My livid father straightened his fur-trimmed mantle and stood at his end of the table. “Despite this unseemly interruption, our feast is not yet done,” he said, his voice quivering with anger.
It would not have surprised me to see his leather strap appear in his hand. But it was merely a scroll of parchment that he snatched from a silver tray a servant set beside his plate. The scent of hot beeswax drifted on the warm air. “This night we seal the first and last contract of our recondeur. When the opportunity arose this morning, I felt Serena Fortuna’s blessing enfold our house once more. Valen needs a strong hand, a master who can control his violence and deceit and bend him to his duty. And yet our family will never stoop to unworthy contracts, even to salvage what we may of Valen’s honor.”
“Perhaps you would like to review the document, Valen?” He brought the scroll around to my place and unrolled it on the table in front of me. “Tell me, do you find any terms you would like to change? I can have pen and ink brought.”
Cheeks on fire, I squinted and strained to make out the letters that might hint at whose name was listed on the contract. But of course the sun still rose and set, and the earth still plowed its course through the stars, thus the blotches mixed and mingled on the page like swarming bees, defying my comprehension. Sweat rolled down my neck. I wanted to scream at him to tell me who my master was to be. But without hope of altering his gleeful course, I would not give my father the satisfaction of begging for an answer I would learn soon enough.
“No objection or qualification?” He snatched the page away and returned to his place, pleased with his little joke. “So we can proceed, then.”
My mother unsnapped a gold disk from her neck. She turned it over and over in her hand as my father positioned the ends of a red silk ribbon looped through the tail of the page and dripped a puddle of wax from a small pewter ladle onto the joining.
“Who is this master, Patronn?” said Thalassa. “Should we not be told before the papers are sealed? Of course it is entirely your and Matronn’s decision, but my position makes certain demands.” I was amazed to hear she didn’t know.
“No one in the temple will question my choice, Thalassa,” said my father, frosty and imperious.
He jerked his head at my mother. My mother pressed her disk to the wax and held it. After a moment, she lifted the slip of gold, threw it on the table, and reached for her wine.
My father affixed his seal beside my mother’s. “Who but royalty deserves the service of a Cartamandua-Celestine? The Duc of Evanore will send his man to retrieve Valen tomorrow morning.”
My flesh went cold as a widow in winter, and the bottom fell out of my stomach. The Duc of Evanore…My father had contracted me to Osriel the Bastard.
“Patronn!” Thalassa jumped to her feet. “What are you thinking? Valen is your son!”
Phoebia gaped at me as if I were already some flesh-eating monster. Max clapped his hands to his head and collapsed backward onto his dinner cushions, roaring with laughter. My mother emptied her glass and waved for more wine.
“Mind your manners, Sinduria,” snapped my father. “You are still my daughter, and you sit in my house.”
Thalassa snapped her fingers at a servant who scurried away to retrieve her cloak. “Never again, Patronn. Not as your daughter, at the least. You have disdained my path since I first submitted to the temple, and you have scorned my position that brings honor and respect to all purebloods. I do not think the Registry will refuse me independent status. Not after this madness.”
In a swirl of silk, my sister crouched beside me. “Forgive me, Valen,” she said softly. “I’ve never understood this bloody war between you and Patronn. I still don’t. But I’ll do what I can.”
I stared up at her, numb, scarcely comprehending what she was saying. What uses would the Bastard have for me? Tracking down corpses and gouging their eyes? Seeking the path to the netherworld? Mapping the realms of the dead? I’d heard that his mages tried to keep a victim living while they took his organs for their dark workings. Perhaps they needed more power. Perhaps I was to hang in their web while they stole my magic…my blood.
My sister pressed a cold hand firmly to my forehead for a moment, and then swept from the room, leaving me with naught but a sensation like an arrow piercing my skull and a deadness in my soul.
Bia wailed at my mother, horrified at the thought that the Bastard Prince himself might walk through our door.
My father bellowed at Silos. “Set extra guards about the western walls tonight and lock the courtyard gate. Reinforce the wards on Valen’s door. The man who lets him escape will never see daylight again.”
Max was still chortling as Caphur and Silos led me out of the noisy brilliance of the dining room and into the quiet night. I hobbled through the ice-skimmed slush, my thoughts as frostbit as the night.
“Your Regis
try valet has returned to the city, plebeiu,” said Silos after a while, as we threaded the courtyards and brick passages. “I think he was afraid of you.”
The pain in my head dulled. I allowed myself to see nothing, feel nothing. This night’s events could not possibly pertain to me. My father could not have bound me to the monster of Evanore for the rest of my life. My grandfather could not be something other than I had always believed. His words…the same words he had babbled in my ears for as long as I could remember…could not be demanding new interpretation now I was old enough to hear them. And the name he had invoked…Clyste. Clyste’s Well, they had called the walled pool beyond Gillarine’s valley, a Danae holy place. I could do nothing about any of it. Osriel…holy gods…for the rest of my life.
“The bodyservant sent by the Sinduria will attend you tonight,” Silos continued, as if I might care.
Even when we stepped into my warm apartments and he began to unbind my hands, my trembling did not cease. Caphur poked up the coals in the brazier and left. Silos bundled the silken cord into a ball and unshackled my ankles. I did not move except to wrap my arms about my churning belly. Probably a good thing I had eaten nothing.
“The Sinduria will do what she can, plebeiu.” Only as Silos raised his eyebrows and nodded a good night did I heed him. “But do not try to escape again. More than me will be watching the walls tonight, and they’ll not hold back as I do.” He closed the door softly behind him.
Someone appeared in the doorway of my bedchamber, but I could not be bothered to look. I had to decide what to do. My head felt like porridge. My gut ached.
“I’ve been sent to attend you, Broth—plebeiu.” The youthful voice cracked like a donkey’s bray.
Purest disbelief spun me about. “Jullian!”