Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  “Earth’s Mother, Lucian! I thought I was never going to get here this morning.” Gilles dropped his pen case and sagged onto a stool, puffing and blowing, his cloak muddy and twisted halfway round, his hose ripped, and his mask drooping from the left side of his flushed face. “Some cursed lackwit found a stash of five pigs and let them loose. A thousand beggars were tearing each other apart to get at them.”

  Despite the grim circumstance, I had to grin. “Pigs. And yesterday it was geese. And the day before—hmm—your manservant spilled your morning posset on your sleeve?”

  Though the Albins, the wealthiest of all pureblood families, provided their son an armed escort party, he arrived most mornings in a similar state. Gilles attracted disorder like beggars attracted fleas. Tripping over his own feet or annoying his hound served as well as riot or ill wind.

  I appreciated Gilles. He had mentored me when my first contract brought me to the Registry Archives, and he had taken it with grace when I was given a senior commission of six major portraits only a few years later. Although his uncle was a Registry curator, he had never been offered one.

  Our skills meshed well; I worked better with younger men and with elders of both genders, Gilles with middle-aged women and fidgety children. We had even supped together several times over the years when our work kept us late. An ordinary might describe us as friends, though such frivolous relationships were discouraged in pureblood society.

  “Surely Prince Perryn’s victory will settle the city,” I said, turning back to the window. “Of the three, he’s said to be Eodward’s truest son, noble in mind and bearing.”

  “Bayard’s stubborn, though,” said Gilles, blotting his broad forehead. “And until he’s crushed entire or someone finds Eodward’s will saying which one inherits, Bayard won’t leave off fighting. But even Bayard the Smith couldn’t be a worse sovereign than the Bastard of Evanore or the Harrower priestess, may she writhe in Magrog’s chains for eternity.”

  I actually knew very little of Perryn or Bayard or the third royal brother, the bastard prince who ruled the south, but every day of my life I would beg the gods for some fitting end for the vile priestess, Sila Diaglou. She and her fanatical Harrowers believed our ten-year siege of ruinous weather, the rampant plagues, diseases, famine, and war were humankind’s penalty for corrupt living. Harrower mobs had destroyed far too much of worth in their pursuit of purity and repentance, ravaging, burning, slaughtering innocents in the name of their vengeful Powers. . . .

  I closed my eyes and summoned discipline. Emotions about the unchangeable past, especially when snarled with ordinaries and their politics, only cluttered a man’s thinking.

  My grandsire had been wise to negotiate my first contract with the Registry itself. A historian of rare gifts, he had warned of the upheaval to come at mighty King Eodward’s death. Young and stupid, I had chafed at the limitations of a Registry position. A contract with a town, a hierarch, or a noble family outside Palinur would certainly have fetched better terms—more prestige, wider contacts, a better stipend to fill the family coffers—and surely more interesting work. But youthful folly had already squandered my grandsire’s favor that might have allowed my opinion to be heard.

  The Pureblood Registry will endure, no matter the shifting loyalties and upsets of ordinaries, my father had said, trying, as ever, to ease the bitter gulf between my grandsire and me. The world cannot live without pureblood magic, and our survival, as well as our prosperity, is founded on Registry discipline. You’ll flourish there.

  Unfortunately, Patronn had not lived long enough to see his own father’s predictions fulfilled. Nor had my grandsire, my mother, my brothers, nor any child or elder of my bloodlines—all of them dead in the ordinaries’ war. Only Juli and I were left.

  “I just hope for order in the streets,” I said. “I’ve not taken my sister out in months. Her tutors have stopped coming; gone into hiding, I think. Yet she insists she should be out rebuilding the Verisonné Hospice or designing an enlargement of the Fullers’ Guildhall.”

  “Rebuilding? Designing guildhalls? A girl of fifteen?”

  “Idiot child. No one’s building anything until times are more settled. And without serving a proper apprenticeship, she’s like to build roofs that will collapse. Though, in truth, it’s not just that. . . .”

  I let it go. No need to bemoan my inadequacies as surrogate parent. Juli was immensely gifted, and star-eyed about her magic despite our personal sorrows. But her stubborn nature was going to bring us more grief.

  “Oh!” Gilles clapped a hand to his head. “Almost forgot. I met Master Pluvius on the stair. You’re to attend him immediately in the Curators’ Chamber.”

  “Great gods, Gilles!” I slammed the casement shut and raked fingers through my hair. Tugging my shirtsleeves straight and adjusting my wrought-gold belt, I eyed the blue velvet pourpoint I’d discarded when I began work, weighing the consequences of further delay against the disrespect of casual dress before my superior. Of course, Master Pluvius himself—forever fussing over me—had recommended I work in shirtsleeves to keep my outer garments clean. But he also held the future of a very important commission in his hand, and he was ferocious about promptness.

  “Did he say what this was about?”

  “No. Just that you should come immediately.

  “Sorry, Lucian!” Gilles’s call drifted after me, as I abandoned the pourpoint with its hundred button loops and raced for the upward stair.

  * * *

  “Lucian de Remeni-Masson, you’ve met Curator Pons-Laterus and Curator Albin, the Overseer of Contracts?”

  My stomach knotted as I faced three senior administrators, attired not just in customary pureblood formality, but in their official gowns of black and wine-red stripes. I felt half-naked in undertunic, shirt, belt, and hose. Stupid, stupid, stupid not to take the time to present myself respectably.

  Summoning composure, I touched fingertips to forehead and bowed deeply to each. “I do have that privilege, Master Pluvius. Doma Pons. Domé Albin. Pardon my rude attire. My . . . uh . . . current occupations delayed the delivery of your summons.”

  I would not lie. Yet neither would I excuse my delay by blaming Gilles, even if his uncle weren’t sitting in front of me.

  Guilian de Albin glared down his long straight nose at me. He himself looked like a sculpted idealization of a pureblood—that nose, the raven hair pulled back severely from a noble brow, a thick-muscled body—and he fulfilled every expectation of such a figure. The Albins were not only the wealthiest, but one of the most powerful, and definitely the most traditional, of families. I’d once heard Albin reprimand a fellow curator for allowing the man’s own daughter to address him in public.

  And Pons, of all people. She knew the worst of me. Her black eyes, so like the pits of olives, had been pinned to my back every day for nigh on five years. Why was she here?

  “Sit, Lucian.” Pluvius, the white-bearded Master of Archives, the robust historian who directed my work, motioned me to a stool in the center of the room facing the U-shaped table. His sober expression told me nothing. Pluvius could dither like a nursemaid and bellow like a guard commander, all in the same hour over the same incident.

  Natural apprehension at sudden formal meetings warred with rising hopes. Rumor said my commissioned portraits of the six Registry curators had won high favor. While following the formal style of previous official portraits, I had distinguished each with a more naturalistic background. Every instinct in me said the paintings marked a major step forward in my skills. They were pleasing in balance and form, and the likenesses excellent as well as true.

  Though the portraits were not yet hung, Pluvius had quietly set me to preparations for a portrait of my grandsire and hinted a second senior commission might be involved. I’d been working late on preliminary sketches every night for a tenday, reaching deep into power and memory and grief to touch the truth of a man I had known better than any other living person. Without question, the sketch
es were the best work I’d ever done.

  Curator Albin inclined his head in my direction. “Your family’s loss these three months since was a blow to all pureblood society.”

  Body and spirit grew rigid. His cool reference shuttered excitement and rising hopes as spilled ink blots a sketch.

  “The Remeni have been elite for generations. And the Massoni were already so few. Both bloodlines nearly wiped out in a single night. Dreadful, tragic . . .”

  Dreadful? Tragic? The words were entirely, grotesquely insufficient. A sudden overload of work had kept me in the city that night, but I could see it all, as clearly as any image my art could produce. The cool late-summer night in the rolling hills outside Pontia, moonlight bathing our beauteous vineyards, still healthy amid the land’s failure. Music and laughter bursting from the great hall of our family estate, as my grandsire, mother, father, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins celebrate my youngest brother’s first contract. Someone—my father? One of my uncles?—would have queried the first hint of smoke that was not candles or hearth fires. And celebration had transformed to panicked horror as they realized the hall was ablaze and the doors barricaded.

  Rampaging Harrowers had drowned my family’s dying screams with their nonsensical chants about purity, repentance, and corrupt magic, or so the local magistrate had reported. Gleefully, I’d thought. The leering ordinary had worn a telltale of Harrower orange inside his jupon. Madmen were everywhere these days.

  “. . . and of course, it has left you in a difficult position—only six- and-twenty, lacking four years until you can be named Head of Family, yet serving a contract that expires in the spring. You will need a negotiator. Second Registrar Pons-Laterus”—he motioned to the woman beside him—“has graciously taken on that commission.”

  My chest near caved. My worst imagining come true.

  In the past months I had pursued every remote family connection, hoping to enlist a competent advocate before the Registry appointed a random official to negotiate my next contract. But the war and the dreadful weather had made the great families wary of entanglements. And now, of all of them, the Registry had given me Pons. Goddess Mother . . .

  The Second Registrar, a hard, sour woman as gray and blockish as the Tower itself, had served as Registry investigator for the city of Montesard during my years at the university, the years when my indiscretion had brought disgrace upon my family and altered my future.

  I exhaled smoothly. Do not let them see. Albin will think you an undisciplined child, as Pons does already.

  “I am honored by this most generous gesture,” I said, bowing in Pons’s direction even as my gut churned. “But perhaps . . . Master Pluvius once offered . . .”

  “It is entirely inappropriate for your current master to negotiate your next contract,” snapped Albin, who’d had the final say on every pureblood contract for twenty years. “He cannot be objective.”

  Yet one could say the same about any Registry-selected negotiator. Pons would be strictly honest, no doubt, but she made no secret of her despite. She believed family influence had unduly mitigated the consequences of my unseemly involvement with ordinaries in Montesard.

  “But I’m sure the Second Registrar’s duties demand her undivided attention,” I said. “As my contract does not expire until almost midyear, I’ve other avenues—”

  “Alas, not so,” said Albin. “All next year’s contract expirations for Registry positions have been advanced. The stipends already paid will not be reclaimed for the unfulfilled months—an expensive sacrifice on our part. But our attention must be directed toward the new king, affirming our traditional cooperation and prerogatives. Your contract expires at midnight tonight.”

  Tonight! I could scarce choke out the necessary response. “Yes, of course, domé, that sounds wise.”

  Negotiations without preparation . . . altogether unwise. I needed to study my current contract, gather comparisons from other portraitists, convince the Registry to cede a more appropriate income for my skill level and perhaps shorter hours. Tutelage for Juli came dear and I needed to be available to chaperone her lessons. Then, too, this was likely my last chance to shape my future.

  The gods had gifted me in exceptional ways, both with power for magic and with a family that indulged and nurtured my particular talents. My grandsire—our Head of Family—had even been willing to challenge Registry tradition for me, and in a moment’s lapse of discipline I had thrown it all away. I would forever grieve for my grandsire. My determination to cleanse the stain I’d brought to his name had rested in the hope of more serious, substantial service than anniversary portraiture.

  “I suppose Curator Pons and I must finalize a proposal right away and set a contract meeting for this evening,” I said. One did not display emotions, especially such private ones, outside the family.

  Curator Albin crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, waiting.

  Master Pluvius studied the table in front of his folded hands.

  Pons planted her forearms on the table and leaned forward. Plain silver rings gleamed from her thick fingers as she tapped a sheaf of documents. “In truth, Remeni, the Registry has made no offer for your service. As we’ve no time to solicit other offers, I’ve gathered together what open bids for portraitists we have already. Perhaps one of these will suit.”

  No offer . . . My mind stuttered and reeled. Of course the Registry wanted me back. My work here had been exemplary. A senior commission while in my first contract. The promise of another with my grandfather’s portrait. Never a reprimand. My every moment since my disgrace had been given to improving both my art and the self-discipline my role in life demanded—to becoming a man worthy of the Remeni name. Master Pluvius had long said I could wrestle out details that made my subjects near step out of the canvas, allowing Registry investigators to identify any pureblood inerrantly.

  “I don’t understand.” My voice—properly calm and detached—might have belonged to someone else. “Have I somehow failed in my work or my deportment? Master Pluvius?”

  “Certainly not, lad. It’s just . . . unique circumstances. These unsettled times.”

  “First Curator Gramphier knows of this?” To invoke my personal connection with the highest-ranking official of the Registry galled, but Gramphier had been my grandsire’s longtime colleague. He had encouraged my Registry contract as a way for me to demonstrate my worth.

  Pons settled back in her chair, her face impassive save for the touch of scorn on her thin lips. “Naturally Gramphier knows. But if you wish to let your contract lapse as we solicit new offers for your service, we can halt this right now. You could contact me when your intellect is functioning at some useful level.”

  Bitter truth quenched my protests. My service must be sold. Juli and I had no other income. Our Ardran vineyards had frozen two winters running; who knew if they would ever come back? And, along with every person in the world we loved, our family’s treasury had been lost in the Harrower raid. We were nearing the end of the funds my father had provided for my maintenance in Palinur. Juli had brought my last stipend on a visit to the royal city. My work had prevented me from escorting her home in time for our brother’s celebration, else we would have burned alongside the rest of them. I needed a contract, and the curators knew it.

  “No, no, Doma Pons. Certainly I’ll hear these bids.”

  Pons read through each application in her stack.

  A Karish abbot sought a pureblood artist to travel alongside, illustrating prayer cards to enlighten unlettered villagers.

  A customs official on the eastern borders needed charts of goods carried through the border station for taxing purposes.

  “Your skills at reflecting the inner person would suit this Trimori mine,” she said, tossing out an age-yellowed parchment. “The governor wishes to ferret out troublemakers from felons sent to labor in the pits.”

  “A traveling position is out of the question,” I said, “as are those in remote or military outposts. My sis
ter is a maiden of fifteen without other family. I must see to her education.”

  And the stipends these offered were pitiful. None would support a pureblood household, much less allow me to accumulate the wherewithal to rebuild our family. These bids had gathered dust in the Registry vaults because they were insults.

  Swelling anger threatened my composure. Pureblood sorcerers held the power of magic, the greatest gift of the gods to a troubled world, and they sacrificed a great deal to preserve, nurture, and share that gift. Not even Karish monks lived with more study, rules, and restrictions. Purebloods bound themselves and their grown children into strict service on the assurance that they would be provided the means to maintain the dignity of our calling and to withstand such travails as war and famine.

  “Well, then . . .” Frowning, Pons thumbed through the stack and pulled out a yellowed page. “I see only one that might suit. One Bastien de Caton offers a position here in Palinur. He requires line drawings for purposes of identification. Compensation left to negotiation. But it is only a one-year contract. Do you wish to interview the master?”

  I leapt at the offer before an angry outburst could disgrace me further.

  “No need to interview him.” Identification portraits were exactly what I was doing already. And only a year’s contract. In the interim I could find a better advocate and search more thoroughly. “Palinur suits best. If I’m required to live in, I’ll at least be able to look in on my sister. As long as the contract meets Registry standards.”

  Registry contracts were quite strict about personal security, respectful address, comfortable accommodation and sustenance, and permissible penalties for unsatisfactory work. My age left me no standing to disapprove contract terms—only the Registry and the Head of Family, or, in my case, Pons, had a say. But even Pons would not undermine pureblood prerogatives with a poor contract.

  “I shall negotiate the best terms possible, given the unsettled times,” said Pons. She dipped a pen and scratched a few notes on the page. “I shall stipulate that you will live in your own home, though this Bastien will, no doubt, insist on appropriate hours. I foresee no difficulties.”