by Carol Berg
“Fair enough. So you will understand why we hold surety for your good behavior.”
The door opened, and one of my escorts led in a prisoner. His slender wrists were bound behind him and silk scarves shuttered his eyes and mouth. A tiny sound issued from his throat. Not a sob. Not a wail. Only the choking sound of terror tight reined, of constricted throat and bound heart, of determined courage. Jullian.
“Damnable cowards!” I yelled, rage exploding from my being’s core. “What kind of lord…what kind of man…holds a child hostage? How dare you—?”
Voushanti deftly shifted his grip, snaring my right arm in a shoulder lock, bending my neck forward so forcefully I thought it must snap.
“I do only what is necessary to compel your obedience,” said the voice from the darkness, cold and deep. “Fulfill your contract, and the lad will survive…this day.”
I wrenched free of the mardane and dropped to my knees beside the boy. Fear and anger flailed the cotton wool within my skull, so that I could scarcely articulate words. They had brutalized this boy on my account. “Jullian, it’s Valen here. Have they hurt you?”
The boy shook his head sharply.
“His safety is in your hands, pureblood,” said Voushanti, his voice stark as midwinter.
In my hands. Indeed. I gathered the rigid boy close, turning him until his back lay against my chest, laying one hand on his ruddy hair and one hand on his breast. His heart fluttered like a rabbit’s throat. “I want him free.”
Voushanti snapped, “You have no—”
“Free and healthy as he is right now,” I barked into the midnight where the master lurked, ignoring the treacherous servant. “You can throw me in a pit dungeon and lock the trap for a thousand years before I allow him to be your pawn.” I could not consider complexities or strategies, but only a certainty that swelled greater than the doulon craving—this outrage could not happen. “Your word, Lord Prince, or I do nothing for you ever and your contract gold is wasted.”
“Free, then, and unharmed, once today’s task is done.” The voice breathed malice that settled like a cold snake alongside my spine. “But not you, pureblood. Not ever. You claim your given word is inviolable. So swear to me of your own will—without reservation—that you will not run. Prove it this day, and you will have my word in exchange: I will not ever use the boy against you.”
Good that I could not hold more than one thought in my head at a time, that I was too dull witted to weigh the balance of this bargain. Yet he was not asking an oath of obedience. Only submission. I spun Jullian around to face me and gripped his narrow shoulders, quickly before I could reconsider.
“I vowed to protect you, Archangel. Do you remember? And so I’ll do. My master is noble Eodward’s son, thus we must assume he is a man of his word as well. So have courage and say your prayers. While I’m off doing his bidding, you can practice your Aurellian verbs, for I know you have difficulty with them. Teneo, teneas, teneat…teneamus… eh?”
The boy’s chin lifted ever so slightly. And then he nodded.
I rose and faced the massive dark in the corner of the room. How does a man yield his lifeblood willing, slit a vein and watch the scarlet flood sap his strength and sentience, silence the music of the world, still his feet? Madness—this foggy mantle the doulon had laid over me that allowed naught of sense, only anger to burn through—that was the only explanation. I bent one knee, inclined my back, and touched my fingertips to my forehead. “You have my word, lord prince. I will not run. Not ever.”
“Without reservation?”
“Without reservation.”
“Very well, then! Be on your way.”
Voushanti bowed to his lord, pulled me to my feet, and hurried me out of the room. “I will outline your morning’s task as we go,” he said when the door had closed behind us. “Speed is of the essence…”
Chapter 28
Blood is unique. Pureblood families insist that each child’s blood is identical either to the father’s or the mother’s, and that the only variance that prevents one of us growing into an exact copy of that parent is malleable “nature.” But those purebloods gifted to follow routes and tracks must surely know better—that blood bears the imprint of a singular being who loves and hates and quivers in terror, who sings psalms or grows parsnips or strips pigs—because blood lays down an excellent, unmistakable path to its source.
Though I had no idea whose blood it was, the clotted mess in the sooty, brick-paved courtyard was sufficient to trigger a magical response when I applied my mind to the problem. If only I had more mind.
“Which way?” demanded Voushanti, his voice muffled by the hood that draped his mutilated face. His hand encircled my upper arm with the grip of a pawnbroker holding his last citré. The engravings on his wide gold wristband seemed to writhe in nauseating rhythm with my pulse. “Where were they taken? A month you’ve squatted here staring at this puddle. We’ve—”
“—no time. I know that.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to focus on the whereabouts of the unnamed captive whose blood had been so callously shed in this deserted yard. But as quickly as the route to his present location took shape in my mind, the lines and turnings faded again, as if I’d drawn them in breath frost on a window glass. Twice more in the past hour on our way through the chaotic streets of Palinur, I’d felt the shattering explosion of the doulon and the almost simultaneous disintegration of sense. My mind was in tatters. “West, I think. Toward Riie Doloure. There’s an old fortress…”
Was this a true impression or was it only that talk of missing prisoners recalled a tale I’d once heard about a private jail? Aurellians had inflicted cruel torments on Navron prisoners, not allowing guilt or justice to interfere with retribution, and certain Navron nobles rued the day King Eodward had proscribed such practices. A young thief had once told me of his escape from a grim lockup such men used for torturing “grudge prisoners”—those who bore their especial ire or contempt. Determined to spread word of the dread place before he could be recaptured, the youth had spat out his gruesome story, clutching his burnt, empty wrists to his belly while a fellow vagabond dressed the poor sod’s whip-gouged back with goose fat. I’d had no other comfort to offer a lad of fifteen, facing life with no hands.
“Riie Doloure—are you sure?”
I shook my head to clear it and pressed my palms to the pavement beside the dark sticky pool. Icy water dripped on my hands from the cornice that sheltered the unseemly blotch. Hold the lines this time. Ink them on your senses. The Bastard Prince has Jullian until this task is done. The traces were so faint. Brick and cobbles did not hold impressions like bare earth. And Palinur bled from every pore this day, confusing me even more. Time crawled by, stretched like a waking cat, and then sagged into a filthy puddle. “Riie Doloure. Yes.”
Voushanti dragged me up and shoved me past broken statuary and trampled herb beds toward an elaborate iron gate dangling from one hinge. An aingerou, tucked under the brick arch, spat snowmelt onto the uneven cobbles. I tried to step over the puddle but misjudged the distance and stumbled right into it. Slush seeped into my boot.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Voushanti, jerking me through the gate and into the deserted lane. “Your family vouched you were in good health. Said you’d never had so much as a boil on your bum in your life. Are you drunk?”
“No sleep,” I said, hurrying alongside him, grateful I was free of shackles and mask at least. “No food. Doesn’t promote my best work. I’ll not warrant—”
“Sick, starving, or dead, pureblood, you will locate these prisoners. Our master has an interest in them.”
“You should have scraped up the blood and brought it with us, then,” I snapped, refusing to meet his glare. I could almost forget his eyes’ unnerving lifelessness if I just didn’t look at them. “I could sniff it for you like a hound on the scent.”
He would not tell me anything—neither the two captives’ names nor why Prince Osriel cared about t
hem nor who had dragged them from this house with deadly force. Unfortunately, he understood that names or reasons would not help me locate them. Only a physical link could do that; blood served best.
We hurried round a corner into choking smoke and worsening chaos. A troop of Moriangi men-at-arms entered the square at the same time, and Voushanti retreated a few steps to let them pass. We wore poor men’s cloaks that hid my good clothes and his mail shirt.
As we waited for the soldiers to have their fill of shoving and bullying, inspecting bundles by ripping them open and scattering pots, statues, aprons, and blankets in the filthy snow, men’s voices rose in plainsong from the courtyard we had just visited. My sluggard mind snagged on the oddity—plainsong here in the city. The melody was familiar, a setting used only at the Hour of Sext—noontide. And then my thoughts drifted back to the blood-splashed yard. The design wrought into the ruined iron gate had been a solicale. A Karish household, then.
The soldiers soon moved on. But as the mardane and I crossed the square and followed the turnings my instincts laid out, an urgency that had naught to do with Voushanti propelled my steps. Our search for these unnamed prisoners had begun at a Karish house where men sang the Hours. And noontide was the hour of execution.
The crumbling square called Riie Doloure had likely inherited its mournful title from the squat, ugly edifice that overshadowed it. Plain round towers pocked with arrow loops marked the four corners of Fortress Torvo and the walls of its blocklike keep. In the style of ancient Ardra, no creneled battlements, but rather steep conical roofs of lead topped the four great towers and two lesser ones that flanked the gatehouse.
On this day doloure took on added meaning. Half the squalid houses and shops that lined the cobbled square were smoldering ruins, the other half still burning. Dark smoke billowed in evil clouds, abrading my throat. The snow melted into black slush that soaked my feet and numbed my toes. A jubilant rabble crammed the space before the gray stone walls and gate towers, cheering and shouting over the roar of the flames as ash and embers showered on them like unholy rain.
“The fortress? Inside?” The voice boomed in my ear.
“Yes…yes…maybe.” Clutching the scratchy layers of my cloak over mouth and nose, I closed my eyes and scrabbled through the denser fogs and smokes inside my skull to find the traces. No good.
“Be sure, pureblood. This is no feast-day frolic to venture. Hurry.”
I found a patch of unpaved ground, dropped to my knees, and pressed palms into the ash-rimed muck, seeking a stronger link. My fingers squelched in the filth, and I fumbled with the pattern in my head. Awkward. Slow. By the time I grasped the life thread strung from the clotted blood at the Karish house, my skull felt switched wrong way out, raw and throbbing.
“Beyond the wall,” I whispered, wiping my hands on my cloak. Beyond the impossible crowd.
My eyes itched and watered. Voushanti hauled me up, and we skirted the surging mob, dodging shattered stonework, trampled grain sacks, and fallen beams that pulsed with dying embers. Snowflakes transformed to raindrops in the heat, then vanished in a hiss when they struck hot ash or stone.
The throng shifted and surged like a living beast, and though only a few orange scarves peppered the crowd, guttural cries for purification pulsed like its heartbeat. “Give us blood to cleanse the filth! Fire and blood! Slay the blasphemers!” Faces shone with mad fervor. Surely naught of Palinur would be left for Bayard to claim. As for the people captive in this wretched place…prisoners…
“Who are we hunting?” My voice, harsh and strained, could have been a stranger’s. “Why won’t you tell me?”
Voushanti squeezed forward along the narrow boundary between a ruined shopfront and the mob. “Because the answer should make no difference.”
Sila Diaglou stood atop the fortress walls. Not dressed in a warrior’s garb today. Her filmy orange robes flared in the wind like more flames, gifting the willowy, pale-haired woman with a majesty and magic that infused the scene with purpose, as if she were the carved prow of a great ship. She raised her spread arms to embrace the scene of smoke and chaos. “Sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana,” she cried. “Bleed, suffer, die, purify. Die to the world. Abandon those who cling to your old self, and live henceforth in repentance for as long as the streams of time carry you forward. Harrow the earth, that the Gehoum shall be appeased.”
A savage roar rose from the crowd. “Sila! Sila!”
To either side of the priestess, stolid and proud, stood three I’d seen at Graver’s Meadow—the doe-eyed girl, the man with the dog’s face and dagged purple cloak, and the man with the oiled black curls. Perhaps the needle-chinned man had died of my blow. Other ragged men and women cavorted along the parapet, waving orange rags, garlands, weapons, and other things round and heavy that they tossed into the crowd. Another cheer shook the ground. Glee and greed and an insatiable hunger surged through the pressing bodies like an incoming tide. A certain darkness, the foulest bile, ate at my throat. Heads…the round heavy things tossed from the walls were human heads, now passed from hand to hand atop the mob, evoking new waves of cheers.
Great Kemen Sky Lord…holy Iero…whatever your name…guard us from madness. No prayers for Sila’s Gehoum, though. I invoked no powers that took pleasure in headless corpses. Evil rioted in that courtyard. If we could save some poor wretch from such a fate, I would league with Magrog himself. Perhaps I had.
“Inner bailey, outer bailey, or belowground?” The Evanori’s voice grated in my ear, interrupting my sudden hesitation. “Speak.”
“Not belowground. But inner or outer? I don’t know.” If I could just think…
“By Magrog’s deeps, man, what use are you?”
He scanned the mob. As suddenly as a judge’s hammer falls, he grabbed a scrawny man in a ragged coat from the edge of the crowd, bundling him into his massive embrace. “Gert, old friend! Our day has come at last! The earth shall be cleansed. Harrowed!”
He thumped the bewildered fellow on his chest and then shoved him back into the river of people bereft of his orange scarf.
“Tie it on,” he said, cramming the damp rag into my hand.
I tied the scarf about my neck, while he absconded with one for himself. We shoved our way through the heart of the press, Voushanti digging his fingers into my flesh, while waving his free hand and chanting the same words as the rest.
The gates stood open, guarded by Moriangi warriors, spears leveled and ready. But the mob was restrained by their own discipline, not the threat of the warriors. Ten men and women, dressed no differently from their shabby fellows, stood in the front rank, hands stretched to the side as if withholding the pressure of the hundreds. Each one of them wore an orange scarf.
When we came up behind these ten, Voushanti grabbed my chin and pulled my ear close to his mouth. “When I give the word, you will follow me. Stay close. Do not slow down. On your life and the boy’s, speak no word until I tell you. Do you understand?”
A bellow of agony rose from the fortress and rippled along my spine. Only its beginning timbre identified the victim as a man. I nodded.
Raising the engraved gold band that he had slipped from his left wrist, he clasped his hands in front of his face. “Ready?” he cried. “Now!”
A glare of red brilliance shattered the gray noonday. The whole world paused for that moment; shocked faces turned upward toward the light, shouts and laughter sheared off in midvoicing. I thought I had gone deaf. What in the name of all gods had he done?
The big Evanori sped toward the gate, his gray cloak flapping. I raced after him, agape. Voushanti and I existed between breaths, between swings of the great pendulum that ticked off our lives. No human eye perceived us. No human hand could halt our passage…across the short bridge…through the tight gatehouse…and into the courtyard of hell.
A grim, narrow, smoke-filled slot of a yard squeezed between inner and outer walls of undressed granite. Ruffians armed with pikes and swords stood behind three seated men
wearing the red robes and wide-brimmed hats of judges. Flame soared and dark smoke billowed beyond the walls behind them, as would befit Magrog’s own tribunes.
Though Voushanti and I existed in profound silence, events inevitably moved forward. A cage of iron poles against one wall bulged with battered men and women, and under the whips of two filthy guards, a stake-cart vomited more human refuse into the cage. Guards dragged a bloodied prisoner from the cage and threw him on his knees in the dirt before the tribunal. Words were exchanged.
We heard none of it. And no one marked us as we dashed across the yard.
A soundless hammer fell, witnesses waved their hands gleefully, and the silently screaming man was hauled toward the blood-slathered gallows that stood in the center of the yard. A bare-legged man and a silk-gowned woman already dangled from the crossarm—the woman crook-necked and very dead, the man in his death throes, his hands scrabbling weakly at the rope choking the life from him. Lashed to a frame at the end of the platform, a second man slumped dead in his bonds, his steaming entrails newly spilled out across the bloody hands of his executioner.
I halted, aghast, not so much at the brutality of this tableau, for such vileness too often passed for justice in this world, but at seeing the faces of the damned. The woman, mercifully, I did not know. But the man in the last agonies of strangulation was Brother Victor, the small scholarly chancellor of Gillarine, and the one whose life lay splattered so casually on this altar of savagery was Abbot Luviar.
O mighty gods! My heart stopped. My gorge rose. My clenched fists slammed my temples as if the blow might jar my sight to look upon a different truth. Luviar, the passionate heart of Gillarine, the one man I had ever met who could make a jaded soul feel worthy of a god’s notice, butchered like a beast. Helpless grief and impotent rage stole breath and voice and filled my soul and limbs with lead. And guilt…oh, gods of night, if we’d arrived but moments sooner…if I’d had a clearer head…