Tracing the Shadow

by Sarah Ash

  CHAPTER 34

  Quicksilver ripple of air…

  Jagu felt it. Even within his quarters, within the hallowed stone walls of the Forteresse, the disturbance reached him. Faint, this time, yet unmistakable, that strange moment of stillness.

  And at the same moment, the magus’s mark on his wrist began to burn, just as it had in Bel’Esstar.

  He pushed back his cuff, staring at it in disbelief, seeing the faint marks of the sigil on his skin darkening to an angry red, as if freshly branded there by the magus’s perverted art.

  How could he be here in Lutèce? And why had he come?

  A thin filament of glimmering brightness spiraled through the air…

  The Maistre’s fair-lashed lids fluttered a little, then opened, revealing a hint of soft grey.

  “Ce…les…tine?”

  He knew her. He was his own self again.

  “I’m here, Henri, I’m here.”

  He tried to raise one hand to touch her face. But then she saw the light fade from his eyes, and as it dimmed, so his hand dropped back. A little sigh escaped his mouth and she knew that he was gone.

  “What’s wrong, Rustéphan?” demanded Lieutenant Friard, glancing up from the roll call.

  “Where’s the captain, Lieutenant? I need to see him. Urgently.”

  “How urgently?”

  “The magus is here,” said Jagu. “In the city.”

  Lieutenant Friard dropped his pen, spattering ink over the neatly scribed list of names. “I believe he went to pay a call on Demoiselle de Joyeuse…”

  Celestine? Jagu’s heart twisted in his chest. Suppose the magus had come seeking her out after the thwarted attack in the Basilica? “Permission to go find the captain?”

  “Granted.” Friard took up his pistol. “Do you need backup?”

  But Jagu was already running toward the Forteresse stables.

  Jagu dismounted at the entrance to the ruelle that led to the Maistre’s house and tied his horse’s reins to the railings. He checked the mark on his wrist and saw that it was already fading.

  He’s getting away.

  He hesitated a moment, torn between his duty to pursue the magus and his fear for Celestine’s safety. And then he saw that the front door was open.

  “Celestine!” he shouted, hurrying into the hall. “Maistre!”

  He stopped, hearing the sound of muffled sobbing coming from upstairs.

  Something was wrong here, very wrong. He hurried up the stairs, two at a time.

  Through an open doorway, he saw Celestine weeping over the body of a man who lay with his fair head in her lap.

  “Maistre?” Jagu stared down at his beloved teacher. He knelt beside Celestine and lifted the Maistre’s wrist, feeling in vain for a pulse. “Maistre!”

  Celestine raised her tear-streaked face to his. “Jagu, you’re too late. He’s gone.”

  Jagu was still holding the Maistre’s hand in his own. “No,” he said in disbelief. “He can’t be.” How could a healthy young man like Henri de Joyeuse be lying here dead? He leaned forward and felt for a pulse at the throat. “A doctor. You’ve sent Francinette for a doctor?”

  “It’s no use,” said Celestine in a hard, low voice. “It was the magus, Jagu. He stole his soul. And when it returned to his body, it was too late and he…he died.”

  “But why?” Jagu could feel tears, useless tears burning in his eyes. Why was he reliving this nightmare? Why was the magus still at large, ruthlessly attacking all those he held dear? “Why use the Maistre?”

  “To get at me.” Her voice was even quieter. “He did it to deceive me. It’s all my fault.”

  “How can it be your fault?” Jagu burst out, not understanding what she was saying.

  “Don’t ask me. Not now.” Her blue eyes burned in her white face; he had never seen her look so fierce…or so desolate. And then the mask crumpled and the tears began to flow again. “Henri,” she wept. “Why couldn’t I save you? Why didn’t I see what he had done to you? Why was I taken in by his deception?”

  Immobilized by his own shock and grief, Jagu knelt, clutching the Maistre’s cold hand, not knowing what to do. There was nothing he could say to alleviate her pain, yet he could not bear to see her so distraught. Would she have wept for him like this if he had died in Enhirre? And then he dismissed the idea; how ignoble of him to even think such a thing! He laid the Maistre’s hand down and looked into his still, empty face, seeking in vain for a trace of the gentle, endearing humor that had so often animated it.

  I came to save her, dear Maistre. I never once thought that I would lose you.

  Blindly through his tears, he reached out to put his arms around Celestine. To his surprise, she turned to him, burying her face in his shoulder. They knelt there awhile, clinging to each other, until Jagu heard voices and the sound of booted feet on the stairs.

  Captain de Lanvaux appeared in the doorway, his face grim. Jagu recognized several familiar faces from the captain’s elite squad, foremost among them Alain Friard and Kilian.

  “He got away,” said the captain briefly. “He was wounded. We followed a trail of bloodstains. But we lost all trace of him at the quay.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded a woman’s voice querulously from downstairs. “Why is my front door open to the four elements?”

  “Dame Elmire.” Celestine started up. “I must go to her. We have to break it to her gently. She’s elderly. The shock could kill her.”

  Ruaud de Lanvaux stopped her. “Let me tell her, Celestine.”

  Celestine nodded.

  Jagu dashed his hand across his eyes, hastily wiping away the wetness. He didn’t care if the other Guerriers saw his tears for his teacher, but she would need him to be strong.

  “Shall we move him?” Lieutenant Friard said quietly.

  The Guerriers moved forward and respectfully, efficiently, lifted the Maistre’s body and laid it on the bed. The lieutenant began, in a quiet voice, to say a Sergian prayer for the dead. They stood, heads bowed, until he had finished.

  “It’s all my fault, Jagu.” Celestine’s eyes were swollen with crying. “Henri died because of me.”

  “No,” Jagu insisted. “You mustn’t blame yourself. He died because the magus killed him. Just as he killed Paol.” He wanted so much to put his arms around her again and hold her close. But the captain reappeared and Celestine hurried to him. “Dame Elmire is in shock,” he said briefly. “The servant woman is with her. I’ve sent for the physician.”

  Much later that interminable day, the members of Captain de Lanvaux’s squad returned to the house. Celestine, clutching the book, had been keeping watch over Henri’s body. But as evening fell, she let the Guerriers take her place and went downstairs, still holding on to the book.

  “Soul-stealing is damaging for the stealer as well as the victim,” said the captain. “The magus must have used up much of his own life energy. He can’t have gone far.” He carefully drew his handkerchief out of his pocket. Wrapped inside were fragments of crystal glass.

  “What is that?” Her throat ached and her voice was hoarse when she tried to speak.

  “I found these on the floor of his room. He must have smashed the soul-glass when you thwarted his attack.”

  “Henri’s soul was contained in here?” She extended her hand to touch the glittering shards, as if there were some tangible, lingering trace of his presence.

  “Careful; they’re sharp,” the captain said brusquely.

  “What kind of glass can preserve a mortal soul?”

  “We believe the magi who practice soul-stealing use a special glass that they imbue with Aethyric properties.”

  “We’re going to track him down and bring him to justice,” said Jagu grimly. “No one else is going to die by the Forbidden Arts.”

  “How did it all go so wrong?” Rieuk lay, ill and in intense pain, in the darkened cabin of a barque sailing upriver. He could see nothing through the seared ruin of his right eye. His left eye wa
tered constantly, half-closed and swollen in sympathy with its damaged twin. Even the slightest movement of the barque on the water sent agonizing barbs of pain shooting through his head.

  Ormas had retreated into himself, nursing his own wound in silence.

  Rieuk had not felt so alone—or so desperate—since Imri’s death.

  “Why did Celestine attack? Didn’t she understand what would happen to de Joyeuse? I thought she loved him. I don’t understand…”

  “Azilis made her do it, Master,” came back Ormas’s halting reply. “Azilis took control of her. Azilis has chosen Celestine for her own.”

  “When am I going to wake up, Faie?” Celestine whispered. “When am I going to wake up and find this is all a vile dream?”

  “You protected me,” said the Faie. “And in protecting me, you lost the one you loved. I can never repay such a debt.”

  “Why can’t you bring him back? Why, Faie?”

  “Nothing has changed. I can only protect you. I am powerless to help anyone else.”

  Celestine was sorely in need of sleep but every time her aching lids drooped and she fell into a doze, she found herself reliving the events of the last hours, watching in horror as the man she loved lurched toward her, a living puppet, moved by the will of the magus who had stolen his soul.

  She sat in the dark in the music room, huddled in Henri’s old robe de chambre, clutching Hervé’s book. The soft, worn fabric still retained a hint of the scent of his body, and as she pulled it close about her, she found a little comfort in it. She did not want to go back to the room, her room, where he had died.

  The physician had given Dame Elmire a sleeping draft to calm her. But Celestine had refused his potions. She needed to keep alert in case he returned.

  Captain de Lanvaux had asked her, gently enough, “Why was the magus here? Why did he attack you?” and she had answered him, just as she had answered Jagu, that she believed his attack was in retribution for the Bel’Esstar affair.

  “I’ve even had to lie to Captain de Lanvaux to shield you, dear Faie. And I owe him so much. He’s stood by me and defended me. How can I tell him the truth?” In her exhausted state, she might so easily make a slip and reveal too much about her past. And then not even the captain would be able to save her from the Inquisition.

  Although she feared that attending Henri’s funeral would be more painful to endure than any torture the Inquisition could devise.

  As the slow procession filed out of Saint Meriadec behind the Maistre’s coffin, Celestine walked as if in a trance. Dame Elmire was too ill to attend, but Captain de Lanvaux stood at Celestine’s side as the last sweet, sad strains of the choir of the Sisters of Charity floated out into the autumn air. Jagu was at the organ, and he had chosen to honor his teacher’s memory by playing one of the Maistre’s chorale preludes from the book that he had given Jagu at Saint Argantel’s Seminary.

  Celestine envied Jagu that he had a role to fulfill during the service; he could occupy his mind with changing organ stops and concentrate on his performance, rather than on the coffin that rested before the altar, beneath its simple wreath of lilies.

  Crowds of people waited in the street outside in respectful silence under a cloudy sky.

  I had no idea that the Maistre’s music was so popular, Celestine thought dazedly. She was glad that she had hidden her face beneath a black voile veil; she was sure that as she passed by, the onlookers were whispering and nudging one another.

  “So tragic…so young…”

  Captain de Lanvaux had ensured that the Maistre’s death was reported in all the journals as being from a sudden and devastating apoplexy, brought on by overwork.

  “If the true reason were given…” he had begun, and Celestine had understood.

  A sharp breeze had begun to blow from the river, stirring the tops of the cypresses and yew that lined the walled cemetery. The mourners had begun to drift away, but Celestine still stood with Jagu and the captain beside her at the grave.

  “You killed him!” The voice was a woman’s, throbbing with bitter accusation.

  Celestine stopped as a tall, elegantly black-clad figure forced her way through the crowd of mourners, one finger pointed directly at her. She recognized Aurélie, dark eyes flashing with fury in a white-powdered face. Behind her, she saw Gauzia, muffled in a hooded cape, staring, yet for once saying nothing.

  “You, Demoiselle Celestine. You who dared to call yourself Celestine de Joyeuse.”

  “Diva,” said Captain de Lanvaux sternly, “this is not the stage of the Opera House.”

  But Aurélie came on, spitting venom. “You put a spell on him. You worked some kind of glamour on my Henri. You stole him away from me!”

  Celestine shrank back against the captain. She had no idea how to defend herself against these unkind words.

  “An apoplexy? At his age? I say you fed him some love potion, and poisoned him.”

  “These are serious accusations, Madame Carnelian,” said the captain sternly. “If you had truly loved Maistre de Joyeuse, then you would show more respect. A great number of people cherished him and his music. This service has been held to honor his memory. You should keep that in mind.”

  Aurélie stared at Captain de Lanvaux, her reddened lips gaping open. She seemed in shock. Perhaps no one had dared to speak so forthrightly to her before, Celestine thought, stunned by the attack.

  Gauzia still said nothing.

  “Your singing career is over. No one will employ you now. That, at least, I can assure you. Come, Gauzia.”

  Gauzia shot Celestine a silent, reproving look, then turned and followed Aurélie out of the cemetery.

  Jagu waited for Celestine. He looked around him at the familiar music room in which they had rehearsed so often together. The Maistre’s desk lay just as he had left it, score paper open with scrawled notes of a half-finished composition, a phrase left hanging, incomplete…

  It would never be finished now.

  Jagu kept seeing echoes of past days: the Maistre looking up from the keyboard with his quick, easy smile; the Maistre listening to him play before correcting the errors, not interrupting every other note with a criticism like his other teachers at the Conservatoire…

  The room was steeped in memories.

  You taught me well, Maistre. I’ll never forget you. Every time I play your music…

  Jagu felt the ache of tears pressing at the back of his eyes again. But the time for mourning was over. He wanted to bring the magus to justice. And there were questions that had been tormenting him since Bel’Esstar that needed answering if they were ever to track down the murderer.

  “Jagu.” Celestine appeared. She looked so frail and wan in her plain mourning dress that he wondered if it was not too soon to approach her.

  This was not going to be easy.

  “H—how are you?” he asked, then wished he had bitten his tongue; how was she going to answer such a foolish question? “And Dame Elmire?” he said hurriedly.

  “She’s still not well enough to leave her bed.” Celestine closed the door behind her. “Is there any news?” she said, coming closer to him. “About the magus?”

  “That’s why I’ve come. There’s no one else in the house, is there?”

  “Only old Francinette, and she’s still as deaf as ever.”

  Jagu took in a deep breath. “Celestine. That day in the Basilica. I saw what happened. Others didn’t. But I saw that you were…different. I saw the shield that you wove around the prince and princess.”

  “You must have been dreaming.” Her expression was closed.

  “Listen. I’m not about to betray you to the Inquisition. You acted to save the princess’s life.”

  “How?” She spoke flatly. “How did you see?”

  “It’s ever since the magus set his mark on me.” He rolled back his cuff and turned his wrist over; the magus’s sigil could only faintly be distinguished, even in daylight, like a faint scar silvering his skin. “Ever since that day, I see t
hings that others don’t. It’s like a sixth sense.”

  She extended one fingertip very slowly and touched the mark. Every move that she made was slow, as if she were sleepwalking. She looked up into his eyes. “Can he still control you, Jagu? He put his mark on you.”

  “It…it burns when he is near. That’s how I knew. Both here and in Bel’Esstar.”

  “Does it still burn?”

  “No. He must be far away.”

  “And if he were to die, would it disappear?”

  “That’s what Père Judicael told me.”

  Her fingers were still touching his skin; they stood, heads close together, locked in this strange, new understanding.

  “I wish you had shown me sooner,” she said.

  “Let me share your secret. I swear to you I will never betray you.” His voice trembled in his desire to convince her of his sincerity. “I care too much about you to let anyone harm you.”

  Her eyes searched his. Blank, empty of any hint of emotion, she seemed like a shell of the girl he loved.

  “My father,” she said, still speaking without expression, “left me a book. It is no ordinary book. It is a grimoire, containing some of the most closely guarded secrets of his profession.”

  “So your father was—”

  “An alchymist, executed by the Inquisition for practicing the Forbidden Arts. He was a good man, Jagu. But his partner and mentor, Kaspar Linnaius, escaped arrest and stole many of my father’s secrets.”

  Jagu looked at her in amazement. “You’re an alchymist’s daughter? And you’re working for the Commanderie?”

  “You promised me, Jagu, you promised—”

  “And I will keep your secret, Celestine.” She had honored him by telling the truth, a truth that no one else knew. “But you must promise me also that you will never risk your life by using your father’s grimoire. For if Inquisitor Visant discovers your true identity, he won’t hesitate to bring you to trial—and destroy you, just as he destroyed your father. He is a ruthless, driven man. Not even the captain could save you.” He waited, watching her face intently, praying that she would do as he asked.