by Kate Elliott
After a while, she moved the candle two finger’s breadths to the right.
“Do not forget me, Sanglant. Our father did, and I was patient. Do not believe that I will be as patient for you.”
Sometimes in battle an opening appears that must be seized in the instant or forever lost. “I have need of you now, where you can serve Wendar most ably.”
“Where is that, Brother?”
“Saony.”
“As regent?”
“No, as Rotrudis’ successor. As duchess in your own right.” There it was, the merest crack seen in the lift of her chin and the crinkling of her eyes: he had amused her.
“It is the obvious choice, Sanglant. Her daughters are fools and her son is a rutting beast. How better to placate me, who might challenge your claim to our father’s throne, than by offering me a duchy?”
“You have administered Saony ably these last few years.”
“So I have,” she agreed coolly. “It is the least I deserve. But, I suppose, the most I can hope for.”
“Is that a warning, or are you accepting the duchy?”
The dim light revealed an unlooked for glimpse of emotion as she glanced at him with eyes wide. Almost he thought she might chuckle, but she did not. “I’m tempted to see it given to Wichman, just to see those two harpies claw themselves to death with jealousy.”
Leoba choked down a laugh.
He snorted. “Wichman isn’t temperate enough to be a good steward. Saony is the heart of Wendar and always will be.”
“What of Sophie and Imma and Wichman? They cannot be so easily dismissed.”
He shrugged. “Wichman will complain, as he has always done, but he will not challenge your right to the ducal seat or mine to place you there. As for the other two—in truth, Theo, what does it matter what they say?”
“They will run to Conrad for his support. They’ve threatened to before.”
“Let them. How can those two help Conrad? Can you imagine him suffering their bickering and whining?”
“If he sees advantage in it, yes.”
“A prince without a retinue is no prince,” he countered. “Sophie and Imma bring him nothing.”
“Except a claim—an excuse—to restore them to the place you have usurped from them. An excuse to march his army into Wendar.”
“Is Conrad so ambitious?”
“Yes. He married Tallia. She has a claim to Wendar as well as to Varre. A claim as strong as yours, now that I think on it. Stronger, many would say.”
“I can fill up an army with weak-minded fools and whining cowards, but that doesn’t mean I can win a battle with them. Let Sophie and Imma run to Conrad if they wish. He is welcome to them. I suppose Wichman is too closely related for the church to approve of a marriage between you and him.”
“Wichman! Spare me that! He’s a beast.”
He was taken aback by her anger, which flooded forth so unexpectedly. “Nay, I meant it only as a jest—”
“I know. But you have spoken a truth despite yourself. The wars have killed all our men, and the rest are married.”
“It’s true the matter of a husband is a difficult one, but there must be a man sufficient to your needs and of suitable birth who can be found.”
“A faint promise,” she observed. “More whisper than shout.”
He shrugged. “A realistic one. Do you accept, Theophanu?”
She fell silent, lips closed, eyes cast down, that veil of secrecy smoothing her features once again. Behind the altar, each set on a tripod, three lamps burned steadily: one in the guise of a lion with flame flaring from its eyes and mane, one in the form of an eagle with fire snapping out of holes opening along the sweep of its wings, and the third in the shape of a dragon with head flung back and fire breathing from its jaws.
“Saony,” she said, tasting the word, testing its flavor. “Yes. I will be duchess of Saony. That, at least, is something.”
2
LIATH knew Sanglant would pray until dawn. He had told her he meant to do so. Sleep eluded her. She did not wish to return to the distant tent out where the woods would creak and rattle all night. Not even the company of Eagles tempted her. This night, Sanglant wanted to be alone as he prayed for his father’s soul, and she did not want to stray far from him.
She stuffed two unlit candles into her sleeve as she left in procession with the rest of the mob, whose noise was for once muted by the solemnity of the occasion. Long ago she had learned how to fade into the background so others did not notice her. She slid smoothly from one group of mourners to the next until she came around past the necessarium and found a solitary path that led back into Quedlinhame’s compound. She remembered the ground plan of the institution perfectly, of course. It was easy to find a shadowed corner and wait there for an hour or more as folk went to their beds and the readers settled to their night’s round of prayer in the Lady’s chapel. When she was sure she was alone, she lit one candle, which she would not have needed had there been even a slip of moon visible, and made her way to the library.
The library hall was as silent as the tumulus in which they had laid Blessing. Nothing stirred. Shadows filled the distant corners, obscured the ceiling, and cloaked the tidy carrels and the latched cabinets set against the walls. She halted at the lectern and ran her fingers over the catalog as she listened, but she heard no noise at all from the hall, the neighboring scriptorium, or the warren of rooms behind her that housed the rest of the cabinets.
The catalog was latched shut but not locked. She popped the latch and opened it, turning each page as she sought the entry to Isidora of Seviya’s famous Etymologies. Isidora’s encyclopedic work would certainly contain information on tempestari. Da’s book, so painstakingly compiled over years of wandering, had contained few references to the art of weather workers. It had been too crude a form of sorcery, something dabbled in by hedge witches and ignorant hearth wives, and he scorned it. He had reserved his attention for the secrets of the mathematici and the sciences of astronomy and astrology, although it seemed strange that he would name his daughter after a legendary weather witch whose power he had in no way comprehended. Li’at’dano had not woven trifling spells to make incantations against another farmer’s crop, or with the blowing of conch shells and the shouts of revelers drive away a storm that threatened to disrupt a wedding or feast day. She was no fulgutari to divine the future by interpreting the strokes of lightning and the sound and direction of thunder. She was something altogether more powerful and more dangerous. Anne had learned enough to force the clouds to move north and away from the stone crowns so that weather would not impede her spell, and some glamour from that vast working remained to this day, shrouding the sun and chilling the Earth.
There. The entry listed the cabinet in which the Etymologies could be found. She began to close the book, but her eye caught on another entry, and a third, and more and more of them as she turned another page. It felt so good to feel the texture of parchment against her skin. It eased her heart to see each book and scroll listed in neat array, each one cataloged, each one accessible. So much set down over the long years. Folk would try to discover what they did not know. They would seek into the dark of mysteries and try to answer or explain. God had made humankind curious in that way, although at times it brought good and at times ill.
Perhaps it was his foot brushing the stone floor. Perhaps a brief cessation of the wind, barely heard where it moaned through the outer eaves. Perhaps he had taken in his breath at the wrong moment, in that hollow space where she inadvertently held hers. Perhaps it was only the scratching of a hungry mouse oblivious to the dangers awaiting it in the library hall.
She was not alone in the hall and had never been alone. He had been waiting in the shadows all along. She looked, and looking betrayed her.
“I knew you would come here,” he said.
She started. She had been looking to her right, but his voice came from the shadows to the left, near one of the entrances to the tiny rooms in
which the rest of the library collection rested in cabinets. She might have walked through that archway all unknowing, within reach of his hands.
Yet she had always been within his reach. She had never quite shaken him off.
“What is it you seek?” he asked her, and at last she saw his shape against the wall, just standing there to watch her.
Anger is a refuge when one is taken by surprise.
“Where is my father’s book?” she demanded.
“It is safe.”
I can immolate him. Her heart beat like a fury battering against its cage. Reach deep into him and burn him until he was nothing but cinders, like those poor soldiers she had killed, all of whom had screamed and screamed as the agony ate them from the inside out.
“Better a clean death,” she said, hearing how her voice shook and knowing he would interpret it as fear of him, when it was herself she feared. She would not be a monster, not even toward the one who had earned her hatred.
“You are right to be angry with me,” he said in his beautiful voice, “because I wronged you.”
“You abused me! Do not think to turn my heart now or ask me to forgive you.”
“You are all that matters,” he said, and she knew, horribly, that he was telling the truth as he understood it. Some things are true whether you want them to be or not. “I thought otherwise before, but I have seen things I cannot forget, terrible things. I regret what I have done in the past. I pray you, Liath, forgive me.”
“I am not a saint.”
“No, you are fire!” He moved, but only to lean against a table as though he would otherwise have fallen to his knees. “Can you not see it yourself, in this dark room? You are ablaze.”
So easily he unsettled her. This was not the battle she had anticipated.
“I want Da’s book,” she said, grimly sticking to the weapons at hand.
“‘God becomes what you are out of mercy.”’
“What are you saying?” He was only trying to knock her off-balance, as if he had not already.
He straightened. “Do you know what is in Bernard’s book?”
Don’t get angry. Don’t flare up. Don’t set the library on fire! She took a deep breath before she answered. She thrust aside the easy retort and kept her voice even.
“I know what is in Bernard’s book. The florilegia he compiled over many years—all the quotes and excerpts he copied out relating to the art of the mathematici. There is also a copy of al Haithan’s On the Configuration of the World, which Da obtained in Andalla.”
“And one other text.”
“In a language I don’t recognize, glossed in places in Arethousan, which I also cannot read.”
“I can read Arethousan. ‘God was born in the flesh so that you will also be born in the spirit.”’
She had expected many things, guessing that she and Hugh would one day meet and that on that day she would have to remember her strength. But this so shook her that at first she could not speak.
He waited, always patient.
“That’s a heresy! The church condemned the belief in the Redemption.”
“At the Great Council of Addai. Yet what if the Redemption is the truth? What if the holy mothers were lying?”
“Why would they?”
“Who can know what was in their hearts? What if the blessed Daisan allowed himself to be martyred in expiation for the sins of humankind? What if the account bound into Bernard’s book is true, the very words of St. Thecla the Witnesser herself? I have studied. The text your father hid in his book is an account of the redemption of the blessed Daisan, son of God. It is the witness of St. Thecla herself, and glossed by an unknown hand in Arethousan—because the original text is written in the tongue of Saïs, as was spoken in ancient days. As was spoken by the blessed Daisan. It was his mother’s tongue.”
“It can’t be.”
“Perhaps not. Where did Bernard find this book and why did he bind it with the others?”
“I don’t know. He never spoke of it. He must have found it in the east. It could be a forgery. Arethousa is rotten with heresy.”
“So the Dariyan church says. But it could also be the truth. Here.” He stepped back from the table. “Judge for yourself.”
It was impossible to stop herself from picking up the candle and approaching him, to see that in truth and indeed a book lay on the table. Was it Da’s old, familiar, beloved book? That book was the last thing she had that linked her to Da except his love and his teaching, except his blood and his crime against the creature that had become her mother, whom he had killed all unwittingly and out of love.
Da’s book.
She halted before she got into sword range. “What do you mean to do?”
“It’s yours. I’m giving it back to you.”
She tried to speak, but only a hoarse “ah” “ah” got out of her throat. She struggled against tears, against anger, against grief, against such a cascade of emotions that he moved before she understood he meant to and glided away through one of the archways and vanished into the shadows, just like that.
She bolted forward, sure that the book would vanish, too, become like mist and evaporate as under the glare of the sun, but when she reached to touch it, it was solid and so very very dear to her. She could still smell Da’s scent on it, even though she knew that fragrance was only a memory in her mind. She grasped it, the heft of it, its weight. Metal clasps held the book together. The leather binding was grayed with age, but it had been oiled and lovingly cared for, and the brass roses adorning the metal clasps had been polished to a fine gleam. She ran her fingers down the spine, reading with her touch the embossed letters: The Book of Secrets.
A masking name, Da had often said, to hide the true name of the book within.
She crushed the book against her chest, and wept.
3
VERY late in the night Ekkehard appeared in the church, looking tousled and sleepy with only a simple linen tunic thrown on over his shift. Yawning, he knelt to Sanglant’s left. A pair of Austran guardsmen loitered a moment at the back, as if checking to make sure he didn’t bolt out a side door, before retreating onto the church porch to pass the time chatting with Sanglant’s soldiers.
“Where did you come from?” asked Theophanu. “Your wife’s bed?”
Ekkehard had a way of hunching his shoulders to express discomfort that had always annoyed Sanglant. He was the kind of rash personality who either leaped before looking or looked away in order to pretend trouble wasn’t there.
“I pray you, Theo,” Sanglant said, “do not tease him. Let us honor our father’s memory in peace.”
“If only Sapientia were here,” added Theophanu, “we might be in harmony again, just as Father always wished.”
The tart comment surprised a laugh out of Sanglant. “I am not accustomed to this much bitterness from you, Theo.”
“Forgive me, Brother. I forget myself.”
“You sold me to the Austrans,” said Ekkehard suddenly. “Like you’d sell a horse.”
“For stud,” commented Theophanu. “About all you’re worth at this point. You betrayed Wendar by aiding the Quman and showed disrespect to our father’s memory by leaving Gent when you were meant to watch over it as a holy steward. Sanglant was merciful. Toward you, at least. Perhaps not so merciful toward Sapientia.”
“Sapientia sent me to my death,” muttered Ekkehard. “I don’t care if she’s dead. Anyway, Gerberga’s not so bad. She’s not like her mother. Better married to her than trapped as abbot in Gent.”
“I am glad you approve of your marriage,” said Sanglant wryly, “since you had no choice in it. Will Gerberga support me?”
“Yes.” Ekkehard scratched the light beard covering his chin, and yawned again. “That’s what she sent me to tell you.”
“At what price?” asked Theophanu.
“Didn’t she tell you already?” Sanglant asked. “You rode with her from Osterburg, did you not?”
“She is closemout
hed, like her mother was, but a better companion. I like her well enough. She is a good steward for Austra and Olsatia.”
“Why do neither of you ever listen to me?” said Ekkehard. “I have something to say.”
“Why did Gerberga not approach me herself?” Sanglant asked. “Why send you in the middle of the night?”
“Because we can speak privately, and no one will mark it.”
“Everyone marks it,” said Sanglant. “How else did Gerberga know I was here?”
“Yes, but no one is surprised that the children of Henry should pray through the night to mourn him. He did the same for our grandmother.”
“In truth,” said Theophanu, “I’m surprised you did not come sooner, Ekkehard. It is fitting for a child to mourn his beloved father with a vigil.”
Ekkehard had not once looked toward the coffin. He had shed no tears that Sanglant had seen during the lengthy mass and reading of psalms. “Do you want to hear, or not?”
“Go on. What does Gerberga want?”
“The marchlands of Westfall and Eastfall suffer because their margraves are dead in the wars. You must appoint a new margrave for each one, to bring order. She would prefer that you listen to her desires in this matter, as she has suitable candidates in mind, but she will accept any reasonable lord of good family who will act in concert with her and agree to marry Theucinda.”
“Theucinda must be fifteen or eighteen by now.”
“She is only a little younger than I am. Gerberga says this, also: If Bertha lives, then she might become margrave of Eastfall, and you could let Theucinda marry the new margrave of Westfall.”
“Ooof!” exclaimed Theophanu with an ironic smile. “A great deal of territory falls therefore into Austra’s hands and that of her descendants. I would not recommend it. Make Wichman lord of Eastfall and marry poor Theucinda to him! He’ll fight the barbarians and rape the local girls, and be happy, although his wife might not be.”