by Carol Berg
The paper was heavy and rich, my name in bold, sweeping script. I turned it over and my spirit petrified. The red wax was imprinted with the royal seal of Sabria.
A glance revealed only Duplais’ back as he examined the gleaming brass ellipses of the planetary. I broke the seal.
By order of His Royal Majesty Philippe de Savin-Journia y Sabria, Anne de Vernase is hereby summoned to attend His Majesty’s Court at Merona no later than the fifth day of Ocet, making all prudent preparations to fulfill her duties as king’s ward and gooddaughter, such duties to include investiture as a maid of honor of the queen’s household and all such proper engagements and alliances as His Majesty may specify.
Engagements . . . alliances . . . I read the message four times before I comprehended its full meaning. And when I did so, the reek of betrayal sickened me.
The King of Sabria—my goodfather by my parents’ wish, my guardian by law, which said that an unmarried woman of property who lacked competent parents became the king’s ward, no matter her age—desired to use me as a diplomatic pawn, like an estate or a forest range or ten paces on a disputed border. Handsome, noble, knightly Philippe de Savin-Journia, whom I had adored from the day I could walk until the day he sent his soldiers to arrest my father, wanted to sell me for whatever pitiful return a traitor’s daughter could fetch.
Duplais had now abandoned his studious pretense, his eyes narrowed and posture stiff, as if he expected a torrent of hysteria, or that I, the daughter of a condemned felon, might somehow produce a weapon and attack him. My own mind fixed itself upon absurdity. I had lived in the country my entire two-and-twenty years, and had maintained no contact with noble society since I was sixteen. For my life, I could not remember how to curtsy.
“By departing Montclaire at third hour of the afternoon watch tomorrow, I determine we can make it as far as Tigano by nightfall,” said Duplais, “which should bring us to Merona four days after, in concert with His Majesty’s orders. Naturally, I shall provide you female accompaniment. Your own attendant can follow with your luggage.”
“Tomorrow?” Impossible. But then, five months or five years would not be enough. The estate was my responsibility. Bernard and Melusina and I, working all day every day, could scarce keep it up. I mustered what calm I could scrape together. “I cannot possibly leave Montclaire so abruptly. You must inform His Majesty. The house, the accounts . . . We begin the grape harvest in less than a tenday. You do understand my mother does not reside here anymore.”
He ought. For the first year we had lived under the shadow of my father’s disappearance, my mother had been our mainstay, her strength inspiring, uncompromising. But then the king had ringed Montclaire with soldiers hunting Papa, and this Duplais had come here with his dreadful mage. They had poked about the house, pried, questioned, brutalized my mother with insinuations and threats until her spirit had fractured. By the time of Papa’s trial and condemnation, her distress had deepened into mania.
Duplais’ slender face remained cold. Long dark lashes shielded his eyes. “You needn’t concern yourself with Montclaire any longer, damoselle. The Ruggiere titles and lands have been granted elsewhere.”
As a fox empties a meadow of birdsong, so did this announcement silence my heart. Papa’s crimes had already exiled Mama, Ambrose, and Lianelle. Now it was my turn. And to my shame, though the terms of my departure were trivial beside madness, prison, or death, I was not sure I could bear it.
Montclaire’s expansive vistas, the abundant richness of its soil, the warmth and unpretentious comforts of the rambling house had created a nest for my life’s nurturing. Though the echoes of laughter and playacting, sword fights, my mother’s whimsical singing, and debates over everything from politics to mathematical proofs to shoes were fast fading, I felt safe here, embraced by the warm stone and sweet airs and the robust quiet that I could not seem to find in any city or village.
The reprieve that had kept us in our home had always been temporary. I’d known better than to credit the king with some lingering belief in Papa’s innocence that I myself did not hold. My father was a betrayer and a murderer; he was never coming back.
Like an automaton, I gestured toward the doorway where Bernard waited, his expression bloodless with shock. “Our steward will show you to a room. It’s very late, and it appears we’ve a great deal to do tomorrow.”
“Indeed. As I informed your man, a clerk will arrive in the morning to begin an inventory. You may set aside your family’s personal belongings. Everything else remains with the house.”
“Yes. Naturally. I understand.” My lips spoke the proper words, the only words possible.
Duplais did not move immediately to join Bernard. His sharply inquisitive gaze fixed on me, as if he could sight straight through my bones. “Have you—? You understand I must ask, damoselle. Why is your sister dead?”
“They told me she overreached in her magical studies. I don’t know what that means. Perhaps you could tell me.”
“Have you any further information on your father’s whereabouts or activities?”
“I have not.” Despite his burrowing stare, I refused to drop my eyes. I was guilty of nothing.
“You understand, surely, an intelligent young woman, a daughter so close in mind to her father, that this death signifies some change in his situation, some rising conflict with allies or rivals. I urge you to share whatever you know.” When Duplais came to Montclaire that first time, he had lured us into exposure with this same reasoned urgency. Only at my father’s trial had I observed his steel blades fully bared.
“You know nothing of my relationship with my father, sonjeur. Nor do you know anything of my mind.”
“Very true. I do not.” He bowed, stiff as an oaken door. “Angels’ peace, damoselle.”
Foolish to bait him. Silly, angry bravado, the kind of response for which I had always berated my brother. But I could not grasp his purpose, and the long day and its grinding emotion had deprived me of any more reasoned response. My father had called me the child of his mind. Then he had set about torturing and murdering a girl younger than me. How could I ever come to terms with that?
I stumbled up the stair to my own bedchamber. Once behind a closed door, I sat on my bed and screamed into a lapful of pillows, indulging anger and outrage and a shameful dose of self-pity. I would grieve forever for my beloved sister and my mad mother, for my wretched hostage brother, and for the false memory of a father I had worshiped. But for that one hour I mourned the end of one life and the dismal prospects of the next, raging and weeping and cursing my treacherous parent and his cruel king and their damnable conspiracy to steal away the home that was as much a part of me as heart and bones.
SELFISH EMOTIONAL INDULGENCE AIDS NOTHING, of course. Certainly not sleep. When my crusted eyes blinked open in the dark hours before dawn, the harsh facts remained unchanged. Even after stripping off shoes and travel-stained skirt and climbing under the sheets, I could not banish them with dreams. My thoughts were already snarled in packing, choosing, leaving.
But I refused to yield these last quiet hours alone to Portier de Savin-Duplais and his summons. Some things were more important. Traveling in the dark, lost in the storm of grieving, I had not yet read my sister’s letter.
The candle Melusina had left burning on my table was naught but a puddle of wax, but I found another, coaxed a spark from the ashes of my bedchamber hearth to light it, and set it on my family altar beside the stone figurines representing my Cazar grandmother and a young cousin who had died ten years previous. Until I received Lianelle’s death warrant from the Seravain deadhouse, our local verger would not sanctify a tessila for her.
Although I had long abandoned my childhood beliefs in the trials of Ixtador Beyond the Veil and the Ten Gates to Heaven in favor of reasoned ethics in this life and speculative ignorance about what might follow, I found comfort in the rituals of remembrance. I invited the memories of my sister to fill my heart as I extracted her packet from my discar
ded skirt, untied the string, and pulled out the paper bearing my name.
The crumpled letter was spotted with candle wax and varicolored blots of ink and tea. Not unexpected from the perennially messy Lianelle. Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I smiled and broke her seal. The letter was initially dated ten days past, but the two pages appeared to have been written in fits and starts. I wrapped a shawl about my shift and settled down to read.
She had stuffed the red leather packet with scraps of old linen. Nestled in the soft folds was a gold ring, fashioned in the likeness of a falcon’s head. A silver bead had been fitted as the bird’s eye. The packet’s weight derived from a palm-sized round case made of ivory, filled with a coarse gray powder. The nireals must be the two thumb-sized oval pendants of untarnished silver. Pretty trinkets. It was only the thought of magic working that left me queasy. Smoke and mirrors and lies.
The letter revealed no hint of the anxiety her wizardly instructor had described. I read on into the second page, a jumble of snippets scrawled in different inks.
I’ve had no occasion to post this, as Mage Bourrier has stuck me on the restriction list again—for demonstrating that his “talking door” could be made wholly inarticulate by applying a rasp to the hinges, and silenced altogether with a healthy dollop of grease. As usual, I am named insolent and self-aggrandizing. Ah, but not stupid at least!
This last scrap was scrawled with the same pen and ink that scribed my name on the outside of the letter. So she had written it the morning she died. Whatever had happened before or after she returned her magic book to the Seravain library, whatever events she had set in motion must have driven her to the mistake that killed her. How could I ever understand?
Hurt settled like lead weights in my bones. Its barbed edges gouged a raw and ragged wound in my heart. I had once believed no pain could be worse than testifying at my father’s trial, hearing my own words expose his treason and murder and seal his condemnation. But then I had watched my terrified brother clapped in irons and dragged to prison when he was but fifteen. And then I had watched my mother’s fractured spirit decline into madness, and I had been forced to beg her family to confine her in their mountain fortress, lest she harm herself or others. And now this . . . How could a girl of such life and spirit be lost to this world? What had frightened her to her death?
“I’ll try to be bold, little sister. Somehow, I’ll find out what happened to you. I swear it.” Though I had no idea how to go about it.
I poked at her charmed trinkets with a hairpin, as if they might yield me answers. The back of one silver nireal had been engraved with a frog—Lianelle’s, surely. She had once filled my bedchamber with no less than fifty frogs that she claimed to have called to her service with sorcery. The back of the second pendant was engraved with a single olive tree on a hill—a symbol of strength and home. My chest ached as if it might crack.
As I rewrapped the trinkets in the linen and leather, a small triangular scrap of paper fell loose. A single word, andragossa, was written on it. An Aljyssian word, no doubt the keyword for the ring spell. Stomach churning in rebellion, I stuffed the scrap in the packet with the rest.
Though I treasured my sister’s sentiments, not even her wizardly talented Guerin nor her revered Mage Kajetan could persuade me to touch her unnatural gifts. Had poison killed Lianelle, I would not swallow it to learn how. Had she fallen from a cliff, I would not jump after her to discover why.
Perhaps some magic was honest and worthy. Perhaps there existed some true enchantments that could not be exposed as duplicity or explained by natural laws of alchemistry, biology, or physics. I doubted it. But from my earliest memory, the very notion of spellwork—some kind of unnatural energies fermenting inside one’s veins, perverting the natural order of creation—had repelled me. As I grew older, the revulsion had become a physical thing, the merest suspicion of nearby magic unsettling my stomach. Now its pursuit had brought ruin to everyone I loved. I wanted nothing to do with it. My own mundane gifts must carry me on this wretched journey.
CHAPTER 3
1 OCET, AFTERNOON
“ Damoselle, we really must be on our way.” Savin-Duplais hovered in the doorway of the library, poised at the edge of my leaving, as he had been all day, like a gray sparrow ready to take flight at the flick of my hand.
“My parents have lived here for twenty years, sonjeur. I cannot sort out our belongings in a few hours.”
I dropped a magnifying lens into the satchel at my feet, laid my mother’s sketch of Ambrose, Lianelle, and me in the box of her drawings, and riffled through the packet of my father’s years of correspondence with Germond de Vouger. Some collegia would surely treasure these papers, the evolving outline of an entirely new theory of objects in motion from the preeminent natural philosopher in the world.
“The driver is waiting.”
I threw the priceless letters into the empty drawer of my father’s desk and slammed it shut. As I rose from the chair, I surveyed the ranks of books, denying tears for the hundredth time since dawn. These volumes were my childhood, my education, my refuge and delight.
“The books remain with the house, damoselle,” snapped Duplais, as if he could read my thoughts. “If some particular volume has sentimental value, you may write to Sonjeur de Sejain to request it.”
Sejain would be highly unlikely to yield anything. The squinting inventory clerk had attached himself to my shoulder upon his arrival as if he were the new owner of Montclaire and I a thief. He had come near apoplexy when I made to retrieve my mother’s jewel case. Duplais, to his credit, had sent the creeping weasel off to inventory the plate and porcelain.
“One more day, sonjeur,” I said, desperation breaking my resolve not to ask Duplais for so much as a spoon. “I sit a horse well and have no need to be bundled off in a coach. If we ride to Merona instead of driving, we cut off two days, allowing me to arrive well within His Majesty’s deadline.” A stupid deadline. What urgency could be attached to a waiting woman? I doubted Queen Eugenie, deprived of my attendance, would flounder in filth and loneliness, unbrushed or undressed.
“Within the hour, damoselle.” Daylight had not thawed the frozen stick.
I would not beg a clerk for my books. Gritting my teeth, I snatched four or five volumes from the shelves of story collections and histories and slammed them down beside the stack of personal belongings to be stored in Mistress Constanza’s attic at the Cask. Among the salvaged items were the box of Mama’s drawings and the pages of Ambrose’s poetry I had transcribed through the years. Though possessed of an unlikely gift for verse, my brother had refused to write down his creations. Running, riding, and swordwork were his life’s breath. Angels protect his mind, confined for so long.
Turning back to the shelves, I pulled out Papa’s favorite manual of swordwork, a star atlas, and a book on river birds. I stuffed them into the satchel I would take with me to Merona. Perhaps I could celebrate with Ambrose on his birthday, a month hence.
Of a sudden, my despite for the King of Sabria swelled to choking. Had Ambrose’s approaching majority triggered this sudden rush to revert the Ruggiere demesne? With a father five years missing, Ambrose would, by statute, inherit the Ruggiere titles on his twentieth birthday, thus making it more complicated to strip away the demesne. Unless it was already granted elsewhere.
“Damoselle . . . the time.” Duplais’ tapping boot must surely dent the floor. His right hand, pocked with ugly red scars, pointed at the door.
“Very well.” I stacked a few more books beside the boxes of drawings and letters, and stuffed one more into my bursting satchel. Hefting the bag, I brushed past Duplais, mumbling, “Creator forbid that Sabria topple because we’re late for my brother’s disinheritance.”
Duplais’ naturally deep complexion took on a decidedly scarlet cast. The Royal Accuser knew exactly what I meant.
Mistress Constanza’s donkey cart had been waiting since third hour of the afternoon watch, and it was already half past the
fourth. As I entrusted my list of the family’s personal belongings to Bernard, and spoke to Melusina about packing the garments laid out on my bed, Duplais twitched like a cat’s tail. I had scarce begun exchanging farewells with these two, a part of my family since before I was born, when his slender patience cracked. “Enough of this!” He grabbed my arm. “You may write your friends once you are settled in Merona.”
He propelled me through the front doors and up to the splintered seat beside the slouching Remy. Bernard had not even brought Duplais’ own mount from the stable as yet. Evidently that did not matter, as Duplais tossed my book satchel in the cart and slapped the donkey’s rump. I groped for a suitably scathing comment to yell back at him. As ever, it eluded me. No doubt a memorable gibe would occur to me on the morrow.
We’d not even rolled through the gates when a violent jolt jounced me out of the emotional backwash of my departure and almost out of the cart. Remy had headed off the road onto the rutted track that led through the vineyards and around the backside of Montclaire’s hilly terrain, a much longer and rougher route to the village.
“Whatever are you doing?” I said, clinging to the seat lest I be bounced out altogether. “Duplais will have apoplexy!”
“No’m. He paid me to take you down by Jaugert’s and meet him at Vradeu’s Crossing.”
“In the name of sense, why?”
Remy shrugged and bawled insults at the mule, while the wind caught our plume of yellow dust and rolled it back over us.
Goodman Jaugert owned a ramshackle stable just north of Vernase. Unfortunately, anyone desiring to avail themselves of his tender hands with horseflesh or the healthy grazing of his pasture had to travel five kilometres upstream to Vradeu’s Crossing and back again, or risk fording Pelicaine Rill, which was more kin to a rapids than a rill alongside his property. Only Montclaire’s food baskets kept his seven children from starving.