by Carol Berg
The caldarium chamber was a few steps lower, steamy and hot. Dipping a finger told me that entering the murky water would be no trifling devotion. The chamber appeared barren, save for the small pool and the archway to the stair.
The downward steps were much older than the ascending stair. No surprise. The baths and their system of flues and furnaces were likely built by my Aurellian ancestors when they laid the pipes and drains for the city wells. I padded quietly down the tight twists into the cellar—into Magrog’s fiery hells, so it felt. If I needed any reminder that I was naked, the least brush of the stone walls served. The hot floor, skimmed with drips and seeps, kept my bare feet moving down a gentle slope. The drainage channel would be down.
Hoarding power, I chose to forgo magelight. The torch mounted at the bottom of the stair would serve me partway down. Beyond that, I’d go by feel until I found the grate at the end of the channel.
Sturdy, well finished, graceful, and efficient, as with every Aurellian structure, the drainage channel could have been the passage to another bath, save for the slimed floor and musty stench. No perfumes here. No sensual music. As the torchlight faded behind me, so did the killing heat.
Something brushed my bare foot. Recoiling, I pressed to the wall. There was movement everywhere, a faint clicking . . . and harsh scritches and shrieks from ahead of me; more from behind. My sweat chilled all at once. Rats.
If a man could walk without touching ground, then I would have done. Ridiculous that the threat of vermin could so trump the fear of discovery as to speed me even faster.
Soon the heat of the caldarium was but a savored memory. A breath of icy air promised an ending to the dreadful passage.
When naught but shivering, I risked a single beam of magelight. The iron grate stood ten paces ahead, its rusted latch broken and dangling free.
Once beside the grate, I held my blazing fingers behind me, setting off a vile, shrieking stampede. I didn’t look. Didn’t want to see. Kneeling in the ankle-deep sludge, I let the light die and prayed both rats and priestesses to stay away. Then I set foolish fears aside and closed my eyes.
Lord of Fire and Magic, grant me your grace. Goddess of Love, help me erase this defilement of your house. No smoldering embers but white-hot coals waited between my eyes. No need to let the power build. The merest touch of will sent magic rushing to my hands, scouring vein and sinew, until I near cried out with the glory of it.
One touch of my hands on the slimed floor and I was already sorting the threads. Generations of warriors posted on Palinur’s ramparts. Hot, dusty summers and chiseled stone. Clever, dark-haired builders and sweating slaves as the bathhouse rose. Odors of perfumes, oils, excrement, and sacrifice, the songs of ecstatic devotions and the grunts of mindless rutting.
Seek the precise emotion . . . A child who knew she was going to die. Resigned to it. Brutalized, the bruises on her neck aching, warning her. Find the scent of ephrain . . . the heat and smells of the pools . . . the horror of this ending place. The shriek of rats. And her murderer, dragging her barefoot through this slime. She knew him. He wasn’t the Prince of Ardra, not if he was dark and hairy; Perryn was wholly Ardran like his royal father, tall and fair.
“Fleure,” I whispered. The lily had led me here. She took her blood from Caedmon and Eodward—two of the mightiest kings the world had ever known.
And there she was, facing her fear and certainty, not a being of breathless terror, but of timeless courage. Blood under her nails. So brave, clawing, scratching, even here in the dark when she knew it was hopeless. Biting the fingers that dragged her. And even as the beast roared and shoved her down, she spat in his face. She, the descendant of kings.
But he was so big. Her hands dropped. Limp . . .
My arms began to quiver. Tell me, child. Tell me something. Who was he? Turn around, devil, and show me your face!
But the image was awash in blood, its threads erased before I could follow them to any discovery. A stabbing pain between my eyes warned that my well of power was running dry.
I sat back on my heels, shivering, heaving, trying to sort through the impressions of the seeing for some gleam of enlightenment before I opened my eyes to failure. Nothing . . . nothing . . .
A sting on one of my feet brought me back to full awareness. I’d thought the winter beyond the grate had frozen my limbs. Another fiery peck on my ankle and more brushing movements. Shrieking. Chittering.
“Aagh!” I jumped up and reached for magelight, but the knife in my skull twisted, leaving me dizzy and nauseated. Flailing, retching, blind, I retreated. The rats seemed emboldened by their success. I stumbled up the passage, kicking at them, slipping on the disgusting sludge. Though the broiling stink of the filth on and around me had me near delirious with sickness, I welcomed the hypocaust fire for the grace of its light.
Up the stair. Around the never-ending spiral, panting in the heat. At last the scented steam warned I neared the caldarium landing.
Somewhere voices murmured. But where? No murderer must discover I’d been poking around a place I’d no reason to be. Purebloods could die, too.
I crept to the arch and peered through. Steam curled and billowed over the hot pool.
“Seeker? Are you here?” Irinyi’s handmaiden called hesitantly from the tepidarium.
“He’s not up here in the latrine.” A male voice—Leo—called out from the stair above my head. “Eliana says he’s not on the roof, either. He must have gone.” The youth, descending, was almost on me.
No time to think or doubt. No power for magic, even if I knew anything that might help hide me. I darted from the stair and slipped soundlessly into the scalding pool.
Gods in all heavens! Perhaps my sins would be boiled away, for it seemed certain my flesh would be.
I held still underwater as long as I could, the span of twenty heartbeats, perhaps, or the striking of the bells at midnight. Then I launched myself into the air with the booming groan of a sonnivar—the mountain horn. “Mighty goddess!”
* * *
Astonishing how much easier lies become, once you’ve told a few with some success. As Leo dressed me, I let slip the awe-filled revelation that Arrosa had bound me at the bottom of her hot pool far longer than nature would permit. And when he remarked on the bleeding pricks about my ankles, I let flow some nonsense about the goddess reminding me of an illicit romance that required me to escape bootless from a lover’s bed through her rose garden.
“Clearly she wished to chastise me for all my transgressions and itched my ankle until I clawed my own skin. I am a new man!”
Though words of apology and appreciation were rare in a pureblood conversation with an ordinary, once returned to her chamber I smothered Sinduria Irinyi with so many, her cool serenity withered. Smile fixed like an aingerou carved into a parapet to frighten children from its edge, she dipped the pen and shoved it into my hand. “Just sign the document, domé, and tell me the name of the tavern where the child bides, and the last vestige of your sin shall rest in the goddess’s hand. Divine Arrosa has clearly favored you for bringing your trouble here.”
I feigned hesitation. “Others have signed such documents? My family . . . Perhaps you have other arrangements for those whose families cannot allow scandal.” Had Gab’s Bear Lord signed his name? Bastien would like that.
“The goddess requires all to commit their intentions by name, domé. Pureblood, noble, the king himself, should he petition her.”
“All right, then.” I scribbled an unreadable signature on the document that described my forfeiture of all interest in the five-year-old child of my youthful lust and again on a paper that ordered a tavern keeper named Drysi—the name of my father’s favorite bitch—under pain of law to turn over the girl to a representative of Arrosa’s Temple. “On my woolly head, Sinduria, I cannot recall the name of the tavern. I scribed it in my journal and will send it, and a generous fee, as soon as I return home.”
I cut off her annoyed response with my palms in t
he air. “Nay, no need to send your man. I’ve visits to make on my way home—to my Lord Deunor’s Temple foremost. By morning you’ll have her and I shall face the new day cleansed and living in the favor of the gods.”
“Very well. We shall await your messenger.” Lips thinned to the point of vanishing, she rolled and tied the documents into a scroll scarce larger than a reed. With a sharp pivot, she shoved them into a scroll case that spanned half the wall behind her. The force of her insertion could have bored a hole in the dark wood case.
Despite my frustration, I left the temple eager. Perhaps Irinyi and the others here had not laid hands on Fleure’s throat; perhaps fear of the lord who had last visited the child had prevented their reporting her missing. But they had placed her naked in the hands of a beast—and they were willing to do the same with a child of mine. I could not wait to pass what I’d learned to Bastien.
* * *
The stars glinted like frost shards as I trudged through the deserted streets. No matter the lack of lamps or fires so late; the starshine itself created hard-edged shadows and allowed me to see my way. No phantom Danae, no voices, no creeping footsteps shadowed me.
A strange elation gave a spring to my step despite the long and exhausting day. Such pleasurable satisfaction seemed wholly odd after investigating so vile a crime. I had violated a goddess’s tainted temple; practiced lies and deceit that would have shocked me a mere four days past; used my forbidden bent a second time without a smat of hesitation; and put my personal, and thus my family’s, reputation at risk to come up with—I had to be honest—very little solid information. Yet it might give Bastien a place to start his investigation.
As I began the last climb to the Vintners’ District, the bitter cold at last seemed to penetrate my bones, and the concerns of true life pushed away the phantom hopes of justice and redress for a murdered child. Tonight, without fail, I had to tell our servants we could no longer pay them, and send a notice to Tessati that we no longer required his house. Egan would be waiting in our courtyard; I had to tell him we would take the rooms. How long would it require to pack up the little we could take with us, clean and furnish the new rooms, and see to our servants’ new positions and the move itself?
As I turned into our lane, a red-orange aurora sheened the sky above the trees, dimming the stars. Unintelligible shouts pierced the quiet. My feet understood before my churning mind did and began to run. And then the window of my soul was torn open and darkness flooded in.
Fire!
CHAPTER 14
“Juli!”
The portico had collapsed, blocking the front doors. Hacking and coughing in the billowing smoke, I tried again to shift the burning timbers. “Please, someone help me. My sister’s in there . . . my steward . . . servants.”
The lower floors were entirely engulfed. The winter-bare trees of the garden smoldered, the vines and trellises already ash. The courtyard walls wept ice melt.
Strong arms grabbed me from behind, dragging me away from the thundering horror.
“Do not touch me!” Snarling, I fought to break the arms restraining my own. “I’ve got to find them!” All but Soflet would be abed so late, and he moved so slowly. . . .
A black-draped arm wrapped about my neck and yanked me close, crushing my back to the man’s chest. “None’s coming out that goes in there. And well you know it.” Bony, maggot-pale fingers ringed in copper gripped my chin like a vise, holding my head immobile as their owner spat the words in my ear. “A masterful job. We heard them screaming.”
Incomprehensible words, terrible words.
I wrestled free, shoved the man aside, and reached for magic . . . water spells . . . quenching spells . . . damping spells . . . anything I could think of. I shaped images of Juli, laughing, singing, driving me to exasperation. Her scent, her terrible silences, her brilliantly honed spellwork. Surely I could shape a summoning and she would come to the upper windows. She could jump and I could catch her.
My skull drummed. My body shook and spasmed. But I had practiced no such spells and could not conjure a dewdrop.
A burst of fire from the kitchen building drew curses and shouts from the onlookers. None from inside the house. Maybe they’d gotten out before I arrived. Please, Holy Deunor! Wild with fear, I turned to the crowd.
Buckets and pots dangled empty from shoulders and elbows. Water casks lay abandoned on the flagstones. No, no, no!
Fifty or a hundred dirty, sweating faces gleamed like holy icons in the demonic light. Some shook their heads, some gawked, some chatted, pointing for their children as if mortal horror were a solstice-night bonfire. Strangers. All of them strangers. Five years I’d lived here and deliberately stayed apart. What use was our holy discipline in this case?
“Has anyone seen a young girl . . . only fifteen? Please, did she come out? There would have been an old woman with her . . . others. Where did they go?”
They dropped their eyes and shifted backward, uneasy and murmuring, “None’s come out . . . Saw no one . . . Heard them screaming . . .”
“Quench the flames, Godling Remeni! You’re the one who knows how. You brought this judgment down on your own!” The husky voice came from a tall man, cloaked and hooded in somber black wool, an orange scarf tied around his neck. Long pale fingers banded in copper poked from his sleeves—my rescuer.
His words held no more meaning than the rush of the fire wind. I could think of naught but those who had screamed, but did so no longer.
A noisy blast, a blaze of new heat, and a rain of shattering glass wrenched me around again. Gouts of flame spewed skyward through the upper windows. The front wall bulged and sagged, driving the crowd backward through the gates. My eyes watered. My skin blistered. But I could not retreat. To leave without them . . .
“Juli!” Again I reached for magic and found nothing.
“Help me, Patronn. We can’t watch him burn, too.” Hands grasped my arms, no pale fingers, but fine, thick gloves worn by two men in wine-colored cloaks and half masks.
They hauled me back as far as the gate just as the whole structure quivered and collapsed in roaring thunder. The impact raised a hurricane of rabid fireflies that swirled and bit my flesh. Shattered roof tiles and flaming timbers lay where I’d stood just moments earlier.
Juli . . . serena . . . beloved . . . Despair welled up to blind and strangle, to obliterate reason. My rescuers’ faces blurred. My knees buckled. I clutched my hollow breast and bellowed.
“Go quickly, son,” said a man behind me. “Send Zircus to the Registry. I’d no idea Remeni lived so near us.”
“The madman?”
“Indeed. Now look what he’s done. Several of us saw it all. I’ll hold him.”
The pureblood touched my shoulder, murmuring.
A weight of iron settled over me . . . a shroud of ice . . . of death. I curled forward and wrapped my arms about my head as if I could hide the unbearable. “Please don’t be dead, serena. Noble Soflet, dear Maia . . .”
“Should have thought of that before you set the fire.” The pureblood’s annoyance drifted over my back like ash. “At least you were considerate enough to confine the destruction to your own house.”
Warning pricked like a rat’s bite through the thickening shell of paralysis. But it was too late and the darkness was too deep for me to comprehend.
* * *
Cold. Enveloping, boundless dark. My head ached, dull as lead. Time to get up . . . to eat. Knew better than to set out for the necropolis hungry. Perhaps it was too early yet. Giaco would wake me.
Teeth chattering, I curled up and reached for my quilts. Only they weren’t there. And the bed . . .
No bed. Just iron.
I scrambled to my feet, fumbling in the tarry blackness. Iron everywhere. Walls, floor. Great gods, an iron ceiling but an arm’s length above my head. Where in Deunor’s mighty name—?
Truth slammed into my chest like a boulder, crushing me against the iron wall. I slid to the floor, scarce breathing u
nder the weight. Dead. All of them were dead. And I? A masterful job . . . summon the Registry . . . before you set the fire. Madman.
Naked and shivering, I scrambled into a barren corner and groped for memory, for words—the right words to defend myself. Anger, indignation, or accusations would not convince anyone that I was sane, that I had not set my own house afire, that I had not killed my own sister and our servants. Great Mother of All . . . Juli!
Reason was impossible. A gaping void in soul and spirit swallowed my every thought and question. Juli had been so slight a body, yet her spirit so much larger than I had ever suspected. I’d hardly known her. The world had never known her. Never would. Impossible.
Perhaps this place was just the world transformed. What more proper ending than empty darkness, than silence, than unremitting cold and nakedness, when the whole of my family was dead? When every new artwork; every writing; every bit of beauty, laughter, insight, and understanding their magic might bring to this world was destroyed unborn?
A cry rose in my chest, so huge, so powerful my ribs ached to contain it. But contain it I must, for if I once let it out, this horror would be real. I propped my elbows on my drawn-up knees, folded my hands over my head, and kept silent.
* * *
A very long time passed until a metallic scrape heralded a change.
“Remeni? Lucian de Remeni? Speak up. Where are you? Do you see him, Virit?”
Words would not come.
“By the Mother, lad, fetch me a light. Why didn’t they summon me right off? Domé Pasquinale’s binding has likely worn off and we dare not impose another before the prisoner’s judged. Muzzy heads can’t hear what’s spoke.”
A thread of yellow light wavered for a moment, offering blurred glimpses of two figures in gray tunics. Of dry, aged hands clutching a spool of thin cord. When the full onslaught of a torch’s light poured through the door, I buried my head in my arms once again.
“There in the corner, Master Nelek.”
“Ah, you see, he’s already waked. Have your knife at the ready.”