by Carol Berg
“Not mad,” said my father. “Undisciplined certainly. The hand bindings prevent his triggering any spellworking. The shackles prevent him trying to escape his duty. He has willingly participated in armed combat, so I would put no violence past him. Mardane Voushanti, I clearly spelled out his history when we spoke yesterday.”
Unfair! I yelled inside. To hint at violence to this stranger when I can’t defend myself.
“It is no matter,” said Voushanti, returning his gaze from my father to me. “My lord imposes his own discipline. He anticipates training a pureblood to his service, a pleasure he has not yet indulged as he has always found the standard contracts too restrictive. Now if your documents are in order…we are in a hurry.”
At a small desk of polished rosewood, my father unrolled the scroll he had sealed at dinner. Mardane Voushanti flicked a finger at one of the warriors, who opened the door. A servant carried in an iron casket and deposited it on the desk. The Evanori lord accepted the scroll. He exchanged bows with my father. And thus was I sold like a slab of meat. Silos’s iron hand gripped my arm, else I would have run, shackles or no, flaccid limbs or no, madness or no.
An excruciating cramp shot through my arms and shoulders, followed by a wash of heat and a shuddering release—an instant’s euphoria before my spirits plunged to the depths, as if an uncrushed nivat seed had only now dissolved to work its perverse magic. One rapturous sensation, swept away in a heartbeat, leaving me dizzy…hungry. The doulon, unmistakably. I had never experienced such a momentary burst, more than an hour after the use.
Matters moved quickly. The lord refused wine. They murmured farewells. My father did not speak to me, but watched calmly as the four warriors brushed Silos aside and herded me into the weak and frigid daylight of the outer courtyard.
The warriors unshackled my feet and lifted me onto a horse, binding my wrists to the pommel and feet to the stirrups. A groom sawed at reins and halter as the demon beast thrashed and bucked. Every one of the grooms and warriors cursed and swore until the mardane himself came and laid a hand on the vile equine’s head, quieting it for the moment.
Even before we rode away into the midday gloom, the door to the house was shut and the lamps extinguished—as was all light within me. No one had come to my rescue.
The shock of noise and activity as we left the secure walls and wards of my family home was almost enough to banish my waking stupor. Bells clanged in frantic warning from every tower. Panicked citizens mobbed the streets, loading wagons, herding children, geese, and pigs toward the lower city, as if they might escape the coming change, or toward the citadel, as if their missing prince might magically develop a spine and save them. Bayard’s hammer was falling.
Voushanti rode in front of me, his snow-dusted back stiff and straight. One Evanori warrior rode to either side and two more behind. Wind blustered and whined through the streets, carrying the scents of ash and offal, stirring up eddies of new snow on stoops and walls, and whipping Navronne’s white trilliot that yet flew alone on the heights, two days after Perryn’s fall.
Few in the crowds wore Ardran purple. For the first time in three years, Bayard’s pikemen roved the city, their scarlet and blue badges spread like a fungus through every square, along the promenades and the grand steps that linked upper and lower city, and at every major street crossing. The orange head scarves of their Harrower allies colored the streets like splashes of sunflowers floating on rivers of brown and gray. Like a plague of locusts, those wearing the rags wrought destruction far beyond their size: smashing windows and doors, toppling carts and statuary, throwing burning torches into gaping shop fronts. Bayard’s men, better armed but outnumbered, made no move to stop them. The Harrowers believed cities corrupt. Given a free hand, they would level Palinur.
As we crossed the heart of the Vintners’ District, three men wearing orange rags upended a barrel into the public fountain. Acrid steam billowed and hissed. The black water heaved, sluggish, oozing. Three tar barrels lay empty beside the stained stonework.
Twelve districts. Twelve fountains. Valves and conduits bearing the city’s lifeblood.
Black smoke billowed from at least three directions. The three men lifted another barrel. No one stopped them. No one attempted to stay the burning.
I wanted to scream at those running away: They’ll not stop with the city! Vineyards. Villages. Aqueducts. Bridges. These lunatics will bring the end times. But spelled silver sealed my lips. My pleas and warnings bore no more sense than the snarling of a beast.
I clung to the saddle, my head rattling like a tin drum in a hailstorm, every sinew complaining as if I’d fought a ten-day battle. Twice more a rapturous burst took me away from the misery, only to abandon me in the same instant, sicker than ever. Never had I felt so wretched after a doulon. Had I told Gildas to wait until the fumes vanished? Or how many seeds to use? Holy gods, what if he’d used all of them? The desire to touch the green bag, to reassure myself that the supply was intact, soon became a torment. My hands twisted against the implacable silk that held both touch and magic at bay.
“Hold!” Voushanti drew rein sharply as we approached the broad causeway that led from the palace gates into the upper city. Drums rattled in the distance.
My horse balked and whinnied. A warrior grabbed my mount’s halter and dragged his head around, while I gripped the pommel with my wrists and forearms until my shoulders burned.
Hoofbeats approached, keeping cadence with the funereal drums. Leather creaked. Harness jangled. Not a hundred quercae in front of us, ranks of Ardran knights rode slowly down the causeway, past the fallen statues that ringed the palace precincts. Swords sheathed, bereft of lance or mace, hundreds of them passed…the palace garrison…and behind the knights, mounted officers herded the massed men-at-arms, stripped of pikes and halberds, heading for the city gates. For surrender.
Here and there a wail of mourning rose in concert with the whining wind. Yes, mourn for Ardra, I thought, besieged with images of fertile vineyards and golden grain fields and the glories of long-ago summers. Mourn for Navronne. For our children’s children to be birthed under the Smith’s wreckage.
Yet what did all this signify if Navronne was returning to the primeval forest…if all cities were to end? As the mardane and his warriors led my horse back the way we had come, I hunched forward over the pommel and looked no more upon Ardra’s shame.
“By the night lords!” The mardane spat the oath through clenched jaw and reined in again.
A party of Bayard’s soldiers, bristling with lances, blocked the end of a narrow lane behind us. I blinked. At the head of the party rode a square-faced knight. At his side rode an iron-visaged woman, wearing light mail and a brown surcoat blazoned with orange.
“Identify yourselves, and declare why you should not stand down and yield your arms,” said the leader, his voice young and brash. The single blue band on his scarlet baldric proclaimed his inexperience. When the baldric began to crawl across his breast like a striped snake, I begged it silently to stop.
The few citizens abroad in the lane vanished into the side alleys and doorways. Voushanti rode forward on his own, stopping just short of the Moriangi. “I am Voushanti, Mardane Elestri, commander of His Grace Osriel of Evanore’s household guard, escorting my lord’s retainers. You’ve no cause to hinder us, young sir.”
“The Bastard does not honor the Gehoum,” snapped the woman, before the young knight could respond. “These men must disarm or pay forfeit.”
“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 f
rom 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 neither 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 b
ad 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.”