Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  Garen lay face down on the floor beside the scroll case. The sight of his back, flesh striped with gore, did naught to make me gentle.

  “Throw down the cane or I break this creature’s neck.” I growled and jerked tighter. As I linked a light spell to Irinyi’s bead collar, my grasping fingers detected an unmistakable shape at her waist. The goddess of love’s high priestess carried a dagger sheathed inside her gown.

  Irinyi bucked and sank her teeth in my arm. As if on signal, the snarling thug brandished the bloody cane and lunged.

  White-hot fire scored my cheek. I triggered the enchantment, and scarlet light beams blazed into the man’s eyes.

  “Up, friend, or die!” I yelled, shoving the priestess into her bellowing guard. Her blade remained in my hand. As priestess and guard stumbled backward, I swept a circle with my foot, crouched beside it, and laid my hand on the boundary. But before I could seal a void ring between us and our attackers, my magic sputtered and failed.

  The roaring guard shoved Irinyi aside and rushed me again. I lumbered to my feet. Bereft of power, I swept Irinyi’s knife across his path and struck flesh. Blood spurted across my arm as he dropped to his knees, his bellow reduced to gurgling dismay. The knife hilt slipped from my hand.

  The guard toppled, blood gushing from a yawning wound in his neck.

  “Murderer!” screamed Irinyi from somewhere beyond the fading scarlet glare.

  Garen, head drooping, had made it to hands and knees. I heaved him up and dragged him through the panel door. Propping him against the wall, I shoved the heavy banquette across the broken panel to block the way. Irinyi screeched like a trapped wildcat.

  “Hold on.” I grabbed the wool cloak and threw it around Garen, and we staggered into the passage. Irinyi’s screaming would draw a swarm of soldiers and servants up the atrium stair. I’d no choice but to retreat deeper into the household.

  Doorways gaped on either side of the passage, some lit, most dark, all deserted. I picked a dark room at random. Spilled light from the passage revealed a barren little cell, a washing bowl and pallet with a thin pillow and a crumpled blanket its only furnishing.

  We huddled in a corner hidden from any random glance through the doorway. Surely no one would imagine thieves hiding so close. Surely.

  Footsteps raced down the passage, past the doorway, back again. Garen shook, his breathing erratic and tight between his teeth. The heavy cloak of scratchy wool must be torment on his lacerated back. Still we waited.

  Shouts echoed, then faded into the quiet.

  “Stay,” I whispered, and crept across the room to fetch the blanket. But first . . . my bloody hand trembled as I scrubbed at it with the bedsheet. My jaw clamped hard, muzzling my rising gorge. I had never struck a wounding blow, never torn living human flesh. These hands were made to channel the gods’ magic, not pain and ending.

  The passage fell quiet. That wouldn’t last forever, not when they hunted a murderer. Certainly not long enough for me to reclaim power for substantial magic. My spirit felt as empty as a dry waterskin.

  Blanket in hand, I slipped back to Garen, catching him as he crumpled. “We’re going to walk out of here now,” I said. “Bold as brass down the stair and out the front gate, just as we planned.”

  Draped in blanket and cloak, we stumbled down the deserted passage to the top of the great stair. My intent to pass us off as two Seekers caught in the chaos of the baths was quickly proved idiocy. The atrium teemed with shouting, bedraggled people, surrounded by armed temple guards and other, more dangerous-looking warriors in black leathers—all with drawn swords. By my estimate every one of the seventy-odd occupants and visitors at the temple had been herded into the circle of soldiers.

  A blood-drenched Irinyi watched over the chaos from halfway down the stair. A slender, bearded nobleman wearing a tabard of purple and gold—Ardran court colors—and a pectoral chain heavy with sapphires, stood at her side. Irinyi’s duc, no doubt. He wasn’t the murderer; Gab had described a big, hairy man. But the presence of a duc boded ill if we were caught. In the absence of an anointed king, a duc could interpret the Writ of Balance. He could condemn Garen and his pureblood master of violating the barriers between Registry and Temple—a crime much worse than simple burglary.

  “They’re questioning everyone,” Garen wheezed. No one, whether initiate, Seeker, or servant, was leaving the atrium without challenge.

  “Aye. And that fellow holding my boots knows my face. . . .”

  A few steps below the priestess the bath attendant, Herai, clutched a wad of puce and pea-green brocade and my borrowed boots. We dared not go down. But not ten steps behind us gaped the archway leading to the sloping passage to the baths.

  “But all’s well. I know another way out.”

  * * *

  The Pools of the Gods’ Chosen were deserted. Half the torches were relit, and the tepidarium pool was no longer a void. One of the statues had toppled and lay in three pieces. Only a few cracks remained in the floor, but the tiles were littered with broken glass and puddled water, mud, and oil. The scent of ephrain near choked me. Garen leaned heavy on my arm.

  “Just a little way and we’ll be out,” I said, guiding him past a godling’s staring head.

  “’M all right,” he mumbled through swollen lips. The poor man’s face was rapidly taking on all the hues of the rainbow. “Not a milksop.”

  “Certainly not,” I said. “Keep moving.”

  My dread of the journey to come was quickly distracted by a longing for boots. Negotiating patches of oil and broken glass with my bare feet took much too long. We had made it past the now placidly steaming caldarium pool and had started down the mold-slick steps into the drainage channel when voices rose behind us.

  “We oughtn’t come down here, Rafe.” A young man’s voice quavered. “None’s allowed.”

  “I tell you I spied two fellows atop the stair. Sarat was so sure they’d head for the front gates, he never searched the women’s cells. Man’s got bricks in his skull. The pureblood was down here at the bath, so I’m guessing he’ll come back to get out. Maybe we’ll earn the livery if we find Fal’s murderer.”

  Murderer . . . Please, gods, no.

  “Oughtn’t be here, Rafe. Goddess looked straight into my soul. What if she comes again?”

  “She won’t. Sinduria said ’twas all fakery.”

  I ignored the hisses of pain that squeezed through Garen’s teeth and urged him faster through the hot passage and down into the cold dark. The arguing voices dwindled. The rats clicked and scuttered over my bare feet.

  Rafe’s timid partner must have won the dispute, as none followed us through the sludge and the swarming vermin to the desolate spot where Fleure had died. And as far as I could tell none saw me kick out the grate or watched us creep through the drain hole and start down the muddy, ice-slicked ramparts below the Elder Wall.

  The night wind whined and whipped across the exposed slope. My bare feet were quickly numb; my hands cut and frozen. A heart-pounding slide ripped cloak and blanket from our fingers, and the bluster sucked them into the night, threatening to wrench us from the slope as well. I kept Garen above me as we crept downward, pressing him to the rock lest he plummet all the way to Magrog’s hell.

  Garen mumbled repeatedly, “Please to hold on, domé.” Before we’d descended halfway, he slumped into deadweight.

  An eternity, that descent, but eventually, blessedly, my feet reached easier ground. I hefted Garen across my shoulders and stumbled and slid down the muddy slope of the lower ramparts, through the willow brake where Fleure’s body had been found, and into the lane beside the hirudo piggery.

  Shoulders on fire, I halted to shift the weight. The tortuous path to the necropolis plateau loomed above us in the dark. The ascent looked as welcome as the road to divine Idrium—and just as unreachable.

  “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

  Light flared from an unshuttered lantern. A blur of dark shapes sharpened and clarified i
nto five Cicerons. So many knives and swords bristled in the lamplight, I might have been a rabbit in a thornbush.

  “Sounded like a pack of dogs in the mud, sengé,” said a gravelly voice. “Looks more like bumbling thieves . . .”

  “Or perhaps someone thinks to dispose of another corpse amongst us.” Smooth. Unruffled. Half-mocking. I knew this man’s voice.

  Hands shoved me to my knees in the icy muck. Others dragged Garen from my shoulders. Had they strangled me, I couldn’t have lifted a hand to stop them. All I could feel was relief that I didn’t have to move anymore.

  “He’s Coroner Bastien’s runner,” I croaked, my head drooping. “Bleeding badly. Would appreciate a message being sent.”

  A woman snorted. “Coroner’s runner, he says. It’s Garen.”

  “Fetch the coroner, Jadia. A small appreciation from his newfound riches would suit us well. Kalme, Ferde, take the coroner’s man to the commons house. Hercule, wake the barber to tend him. I’ll bring this one along.”

  The four hurried off, with scarce a footfall between them. The one giving orders remained. The sengé—the headman. Demetreo’s smooth authority was unmistakable.

  A callused hand lifted my drooping chin and his dark eyes memorized my face. “Not often does Serena Fortuna allow a Ciceron to see a pureblood unmasked. You appear quite human. Neither monstrous deformity nor divine beauty hiding in half the face.”

  The hand let go and my chin sagged again. The wet crawled up my thin hose and the hem of my tunic. The crumpled page bearing my signature had vanished from my waist. A small loss. But my failure was far worse than that.

  The scroll case that contained the name and signature of the child murderer had lain a handsbreadth from Garen, and I’d not thought to grab the thing as we fled. And in accomplishing this nothing, I had gotten Garen beaten to raw meat. To top it all, I had taken life, sullying my family’s name beyond repair.

  All I could manage was a shivering bark of a laugh. “Indeed. A b-bumbler, as your man said. Most . . . ordinary.”

  I felt naked without a mask. Inside, too. The cold settled deeper.

  “Come along.” Demetreo hauled me up as if I were Fleure’s size. “Wouldn’t want the coroner to think I’d misplaced his prize. Though tonight . . . mmm . . . you may discover your true place in his regard.” The thought seemed to amuse him.

  Mercifully, the Ciceron babbled no more nonsense as he escorted me through his ramshackle domain. Perhaps he recognized that my spirit was leaden with failure and my sight smeared with blood. “Are you injured, too?” The top of Demetreo’s plaited hair might come only to the height of my ear, but the arm, snaked under my shoulder and around my back, could have wrestled the bear in my vision.

  “Just deple—” Idiot, mind your tongue! Remember who you are. “Just cold. Tired. Wet.” I shrugged off his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

  Given a bit of time, a bit of warmth, a drink, I could summon magic again.

  He didn’t protest—or laugh—but backed away, spreading his arms wide. His mockery stung. He directed me into a narrow alley.

  “So, it wasn’t just a common witness yon Garen escorted down our lane earlier this night,” he said, as we trudged between huts cobbled from wood, leather scraps, mud, and straw. “I was right to discipline my watch for neglecting to identify the trespasser.”

  “We were on coroner’s business. Pureblood business.”

  “Tell me, chosen of the gods, does the law forbid me to hinder a pureblood without his mask in the same fashion as one full-dressed? For I am determined to press you for more information. I must know whether to prepare for unpleasant intrusions from those who live so high above my little domain.”

  His question pricked like a lance tip. The temple servant Rafe might easily report the two he’d seen atop the stair, and if Irinyi’s guards discovered the kicked-out grate, the priestess and her duc would know exactly where Garen and the pureblood murderer had ended up.

  Honesty could complicate matters. But then again, I walked unharmed as yet.

  “Be prepared, yes,” I said. “Arrosa’s Temple could very well send someone to inquire about a pureblood and his wounded servant tumbling into your lap in the deeps of the night. We were trying to identify the girl child’s murderer, but it all went wrong.”

  How had Irinyi recognized my enchantments as fakery so quickly? They were good. I had tested them inside the prometheum. Perhaps it had been stupid to reveal what I knew about Fleure. Please gods the wind had snatched away the document with my writing on it. If I’d dropped it inside the temple, Irinyi could take the Registry a story about a pureblood who had conceived a child, betrayed his promise to give her to the goddess, and come back to use magic in a crime—stealing the evidence of his guilt and killing her servant. If someone was able to connect me with the page, they’d have a real murder to lay at my feet.

  My head felt hopelessly muddled. “Does Bastien get his hands on me again, I’m thinking he’ll lock me up for a year,” I said. Or the coroner would be dead and I would be buried alive in the Tower cellar.

  “I doubt that. You’ll be in his good grace, if a fiendish bulldog can be said to have graces.”

  Now it was my turn to snort in disbelief. Bastien, the fiendish bulldog—exactly so. But good grace?

  The outer wall—Caedmon’s Wall—loomed huge over the muddy lanes. Firelight here and there illuminated a warren of huts and shacks built up so tightly to the wall, a defender would have to barge through some family’s hovel to find the steps up to the wall walk.

  The hovels that clustered against the Elder Wall were, if anything, meaner. We ducked under a sodden length of ragged cloth hung on a stretched rope. Beyond a curtain of rain, a squat stone building roofed with black slate protruded from the Elder Wall’s rocky underpinning like a wart on a toad. As we crossed a lake of muck to reach it, the building’s red-painted door swung open as of its own will.

  “Our commons house,” said Demetreo. He vanished inside. My skin prickled. Was he so sure I would follow?

  Soaked and shivering, ankle-deep in freezing muck on a starless, moonless midnight, I stopped to consider that. If the headman believed Bastien had riches to share, then clobbering me on the head as I walked in and making a bid for ransom was not out of the question. Who knew whether Demetreo’s people had actually brought Garen here or had any real intent to help him? No one in his right mind would trust a Ciceron.

  Yet truly, I’d left my right mind behind long ago. Demetreo’s behavior had some purpose beyond simple ransom. And if I could regain a bit of power for magic, I could find Garen. I certainly wasn’t going to leave him bleeding in this cesspool.

  Filled with foreboding, I commanded my numb feet to carry me onward, through the red door into the den of thieves.

  CHAPTER 24

  If ever a man’s expectations were confounded, so were mine when I stumbled into the hirudo commons house. Expecting grimy dimness, I found plastered walls and a dozen lamps beaming through panes of emerald, scarlet, and diamond clarity. Demetreo’s pickthieves must have stolen a vat of oil to keep them lit.

  Expecting dank and cold, I found a bonfire blazing in a circular stone pit. My frozen face stung with the glorious heat.

  Expecting hostile, silent men twirling knives, I found a gallery of homely activity. Two ragged fellows diced in the corner, serious as if the rise and set of the sun depended on their continued play. A younger man, wearing hooped earrings and ribbon-laced braids, plucked the strings of a small harp. A swarthy giant chopped turnips as if the dusty roots were his enemies’ heads.

  Garen lay prone on a pile of cushions near the fire, surrounded by old women. One toothless crone held a tin basin, while her twin clucked and blotted his bruised face with a scrap of linen. Another elder wearing a necklace of bones murmured soft encouragement as she peeled the shreds of his shirt from his bloody back. Garen’s mumbled protests had reached a reassuring vigor.

  Trying to maintain a modicum of self-possessio
n, I clamped suddenly trembling hands under my arms and looked away, only to find a cross-eyed girl boldly examining me sodden head to mud-splattered legs. Grinning, she dropped a fistful of herbs into a pot steaming on the hob. My already heated cheeks blazed hotter than her fire.

  Demetreo drank from a tin cup that sent out pleasant fumes of clove and lemon. A giggling girl child in a skirt woven of rags offered me one as well. “My granny’s cider. ’Twill warm your bones and vitals and make your eyes keen.”

  I accepted the cup, inhaling the fragrant steam with gratitude. Lingering wariness prevented my tasting it right away, for, indeed, two hostile, silent men with blades had attached themselves to my flanks.

  A lift of Demetreo’s chin dismissed the two to the shadowed corners whence they’d come. “What happened to Bastien’s man?” he said, pointing his cup at the prostrate Garen.

  “A brute tried to beat secrets out of him,” I said just loud enough that Garen might hear, “but he yielded nothing.”

  A rain-soaked breeze from the open door announced a newcomer.

  “What’s so urgent to fetch a man from his finest dream in a twelvemonth?” A great yawn punctuated this drowsy question.

  Slight, rumpled, his greasy hair a wet tangle, Bek the barber-surgeon fixed his charcoal gaze on Garen and the flock of women. “I trust you’ve sent for Bastien. And where’s our coroner’s luck charm?” He twisted around. “Ah.”

  Waggling his eyebrows at me, the surgeon tossed his dripping cloak to the cider girl and stepped briskly to Garen’s side. “What in all hells happened to you, fool?”

  “Din’ talk. No milksop.”

  Garen’s slurred defense twisted Bek’s hard mouth into a cadaverous grin. “I’d never think it. Here, let me do that. . . .”

  He took one of the twin crones’ rags, sniffed at it, and dipped a finger into the basin.

  “Magrog’s balls, woman! Get me fresh water and make it hot. I’ve told you; hot water will not boil a man’s liver. I swear it on the sengé’s blessed grandmam.”