by Carol Berg
“Examine this heron’s configuration,” I said, while sketching the odd diagrams I’d seen on Lianelle’s bit of paper. “Have you seen this one here on the river? Or any of these species?”
“Spirits and daemons, Ani,” he muttered, “when could I have seen anything?”
“Time is what you have, Ambrose. Eyes and ears. And a mind to focus outward . . . or inward. Have you seen anything like? A purple heron? A Louvel tern?” I brushed my hand over the filled pages detailing magic and conspiracy. “Any marvels like these? I never cared for rare birds before. I didn’t believe they were real, because I hadn’t seen them for myself. But that sole glimpse . . . I believe it now.”
“Let me see the cursed book.”
I shifted the book to Ambrose’s knees and the stick of plummet, more than half worn away, to his cold hand. Torchlight streamed through the door grate, the pattern of the bars growing ever more distinct as evening faded into night. He flipped pages until he came to an inked sketch, labeled PIED AVOCET.
“This one. I might have seen this one. . . .”
He tapped on the page but quickly sketched a hand, then overlaid it with an X. I touched the blood family mark on my left hand, and Ambrose dipped his head. A sorcerer . . .
“It settled on one of these ledges one night. Stupid bird, to visit here, as I had nothing to give it. Kept coming back, always at night. Not sure of its markings or . . . decorations. I was . . . sick . . . in those days. Wasn’t seeing so well. But I’m sure it was one of them.”
“To know the markings would be essential,” I said. “The decorations, too.” As in whether the visitor wore a mage collar.
As Ambrose rambled on about birds supposedly spied through the slotlike gaps, he scribbled notes on the page, desperately fast. Stark, bleak notes that curdled my blood.
Wanted to die. Tried starving. Almost worked, but then he came . . .
He tapped a finger on the marked hand.
Never saw his face. He taught the pig how to force food down me. Came another time and cut my thigh. Used a . . .
His hand paused. I could feel him searching for the word.
. . . bladder to squeeze something into the cut. Thought my leg would fall off. Wished for it. Sick for months. Dizzy. Puking. Pissing blood. Lunatic dreams. Saw things couldn’t be real. He came again and again. Always in the night. Sneaking. Always asking what I saw. But I wouldn’t tell him. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Drove him loony. One night, a different one came—a mage with a white staff, just like the one who came to Montclaire. Said he’d been told to get some use out of me. He tried. Felt as if he boiled the inside of my skull. At the end, he said I was worthless. Broken. He was right. Haven’t dreamt since. Haven’t seen anything, anyone. Can’t think straight anymore.
He paused for a moment, then wrote the last and circled it, pressing so hard he bent the stub of plummet.
I don’t believe Papa’s innocent. You’re just wishing. But all the wishing’s been torn out of me. I want to deliver him to the Souleater myself. I can’t stay here. Can’t.
“. . . damnable birds never came back. Should’ve strangled them. You can keep your fool book.” He stuffed it back into my hands.
Night had closed in. The flickering torch provided too little light to read or write, especially with tears blurring my eyes. I had been planning to give Ambrose the powder in my shoe and tell him how to use it, should I fail at proving Papa’s innocence. But desperate as my brother was, he would surely try it right away, without thinking it through. He’d be caught and punished, named a lawbreaker in his own right, which would justify everything that had been and would be done to him. And sure as sunrise, he would force them to kill him before they could drag him back here. I could not allow that.
“Oh, one more,” I said and opened the book to a new page. Duplais was right. I could not give him false hopes. ENDURE, I wrote in large capitals. FOR MAMA. FOR LIANELLE.
“Ani . . . ,” he whispered.
“Watch for birds,” I said. My fingers touched the words I had written. “Remember their markings. You’re the only person who understands the importance of these things. The only person in the world I trust. I need to know you’re watching . . . until the day you walk free.”
The roar emerged from the depths of his being, erupting in an agony that shook the Spindle’s rocky foundation. He leapt to his feet and ripped the book from my hands. Raging, cursing, he tore out its pages one by one, shredding the delicate drawings, the glowing colors, all the harmony of science and art that had gone into its making. “Birds . . . courts . . . walls . . . magic . . . family. I. Hate. All! Don’t patronize me! Don’t come here again!”
As if in echo of his rage, wind thundered through the portals, cold and pitiless, and the faint bells of the city pealed ninth hour. The warder shouted for him to be silent or be chained. As Pognole burst the door open, Ambrose stuffed the gathered scraps of the book through a barred portal. The wind scattered them like ghosts through the night.
“To the wall, traitor spawn!” A whipcrack split the blustering air. “Do you see the fruits of indulgence, girl? One lapse and we’ve lost all discipline.”
Pognole circled toward the portal, snapping his leather strap yet again. Sparks! Holy saints, blue and yellow sparks flew from it. Ambrose backed away, the sparks reflected in his eyes. No matter how he tried to mask it, he was terribly afraid. It was not just main strength and cruelty the warder used to control him.
“To the wall, boy, or the next falls on your back! What have you been up to?”
As the warder squinted through the barred opening, Ambrose, shaking, threw back his head and inhaled deeply. His arms tightened about his ribs. “Get out of here, Ani. For love, for mercy, get out and don’t come back.”
“Ambrose . . .”
“Now, Ani.”
The warder, seething, marched back to the door. “Come, damoselle. Your warrant is expired. Time for you to go, as this rude lout has said.”
“You’ve no right to harm him,” I said as Pognole hooked the coiled whip to his belt and herded me out of the door. “He is the king’s goodson and is convicted of no crime.”
“Our king saw fit to confine the boy to a prison, damoselle. Good order in a prison is the warder’s province. Who could expect a delicate lady to understand that?” He slammed the door. “Did he accuse me of harming him?” Menace barbed the question like iron thorns.
“Naturally, my warning was only hypothetical,” I said, reining in my hatred. “But I’ve observed his condition now, and as he promises good behavior, I will expect to see no deterioration when I come back. And I will come back. He has promised to watch for birds!” I made sure to speak clearly through the open grate.
My brother made no answer as he spread arms and legs and turned face to the wall.
DESPAIRING SCREAMS FOLLOWED US AS Scago rowed us downriver. Were they in my ears, in my head, or solely in my imagining? No matter which, I believed them to be my brother’s. I did not block them out. Even as they heated the cold darkness in my belly, I honed the blade of logic. To determine how to get Ambrose out of the Spindle, I had to know who wanted him there, who wanted him tamed.
The administrator did not attempt to question me. That, at least, was a mercy. He did eye the few scraps of soggy parchment caught by the current. He snagged one pale, limp fragment and peered at it through the spectacles he wore from time to time. “A hoopoe?” he murmured, puzzled; then he threw the disintegrating scrap back into the river. Ambrose had saved our secrets.
“Tell me one thing, Duplais,” I said as Scago began his return journey to the Spindle and the two of us set out across the mudflats. “Who hired Warder Pognole?”
Duplais shook his head. “Merona’s First Magistrate, I suppose, or perhaps the commandant of the Guard Royale or . . . I’ve no idea. Why?”
It had occurred to me that Pognole served two masters. No matter what royal official had jurisdiction over the Spindle, and no matter what rules
the king had laid down for Ambrose’s confinement, the warder held the keys to the water gates. Pognole had allowed the man with the handmark and Dante to torment an innocent man, but he had sneaked them in at night, outside of public view. It had been necessary to keep their presence secret from his legitimate overseer.
“You told me you had notified the warder to double Ambrose’s protection. But, then, twice nothing is nothing. If you mean what you say about protecting my brother and me, you’d best not trust the warder to do it. Else tell me why Mage Dante and some other mage were allowed to see him.”
“Dante! When?” Genuine surprise. An unusual slip. Duplais was a bottomless well, taking in everything and yielding nothing.
“I don’t know. He sneaked in during the night to finish the work his friend began.”
Duplais could not be either of Pognole’s masters. He had been genuinely furious when Pognole forbade him to accompany me into the prison. And Ambrose would have recognized the Savin mark on Duplais’ hand as the same device marked our goodfather’s hand. But someone had installed the devilish warder apurpose. I’d vow it was the same person who held my father.
Duplais did not question me further. His attention seemed wholly preoccupied with our surroundings.
Perhaps it was overwrought nerves, perhaps it was the poisonous atmosphere of the Spindle, lingering to addle my head, but the world seemed fundamentally altered now dark had fallen. The harbor was deserted. On a mild autumn night, gleaners should be scouring the mudflats and the docks. Fishermen should be unloading a late catch. But scarce a light could be seen anywhere, and the only sounds were the faint clangs of buoys and the slop of the river about the docks. World’s changing, Scago had said. Magic’s comin’ back. As if magic were a personality of itself—or a defeated legion come to reconquer what it had lost.
Ladyslipper was already skittish when we reclaimed our mounts from the tallyman’s lad. The boy snatched his fee from Duplais’ hand, and without a word grabbed his lantern and sped up a dark dockside lane. Duplais tried four taverns before finding torchmen to light our way back to Castelle Escalon, and had to pay ten times the usual fee.
We’d gone no more than half a kilometre up the Market Way when a flock of birds erupted from a warehouse to our left—thousands of them flooded into the night, screeching, fluttering, blocking out half the sky as they spiraled upward. The storm wind of their wings snuffed one of the torches, and our bearers threw down Duplais’ coins and streaked back down the hill.
“Ride!” Duplais shouted, as the tip of the spiral reached its apex and arced downward again, on a course to intercept us at the boulevard that divided Riverside from the upper city.
The horses scarce needed a nudge to break into a gallop. The wind stung eyes and nostrils like summer wildfires in the maquis. Fluttering wings mimed the wavering thunder of the flames. As Ladyslipper’s breath chugged beneath me, we approached the deserted boulevard.
At the moment we crossed, Duplais flung one hand backward and shouted, “Carriamente! ” The air rippled as if a transparent curtain had been drawn. A few birds plummeted to earth, and the bulk of the wild flock arced away. A glance behind and I saw the birds spiral downward into the dark masses of tenements. Faint cries fractured the silence. An infant’s wail threaded the settling quiet.
In tandem Duplais and I reined in and coaxed our mounts to a walk. My head throbbed with pent chaos. Yet I could not take time to inquire how it was possible that a failed student of Seravain had worked this seeming . . . magic . . . to turn aside the maddened birds, as he had the rats the first time we rode these streets. A patch of thicker night, very like a fog collected in a hollow or river gorge, drifted in front of us. Unwilling to retreat, we rode through it. I could not see Ladyslipper’s ears. Thinking of rats and sinkholes, I bent low over her neck. “Careful, careful of your steps, sweetings. Take us home. To the stable. To the warmth. To the light.”
When we emerged from the thick dark, Duplais nudged his mount closer. “Do we encounter another such, halt. I’ll dismount and lead them both.”
Such patches hung everywhere in the streets. When we could not avoid another, I stopped as he’d said. But the dark reached out to enfold me, and I could neither hear my companion nor feel his presence. “Duplais? ”
He didn’t answer. Panic rose in curdling waves. But for Ladyslipper’s sake I whispered soothing nonsense. When we emerged from the blackness, Duplais was waiting.
“I halted,” I said, accusing. “I waited, called, but you didn’t answer.”
“I called you, as well. I don’t know.” I did not need to articulate the question he had answered. And so we rode on into the Plas Royale.
The drifting purple and green lights had multiplied in the ruin of the Bastionne Camarilla. And some few drifted into the roadway, like bladderfish floating on an incoming tide. Duplais halted to let them pass or detoured to avoid them. I followed his lead, sickened when one came too near, a pocket of cold that stank of char and soot.
“What are they?” I whispered when we had navigated and arrived at the palace gates.
He shook his head and breathed deep, as the guards approved his identity and opened the gate. “Honestly, damoselle, I have no idea.” It struck me as his first entirely unguarded opinion since his appearance at Montclaire.
We dismounted and gave our horses to a waiting lad. “Sonjeur . . .”
Duplais had tried to help Ambrose in the days before Papa’s trial. The “officious prick,” so Ambrose said, had prevented him pronouncing some salacious opinions of King Philippe within hearing of the Guard Royale, warning repeatedly that reckless speech from a youth on the verge of manhood was no game. And at the trial, I had listened as the Accuser had recounted Ambrose’s behavior honestly before the king, yet left out the full extent of my brother’s foolishness.
“. . . my brother has been obscenely, horrifically abused in the Spindle. They’ve used sorcery to torture him.”
“Damoselle, your brother’s status is entirely out of my purview. Please present your findings to someone who might have an interest.” Torchlight glinting on his stony face, he bade the waiting soldiers divine grace and walked away.
“Damn your grace and your honor and your king,” I spat, but under my breath, like the coward I was. And then I cursed my own foolish notion that Portier de Savin-Duplais might actually possess a heart.
CHAPTER 16
19 OCET, MORNING
I slept little after my visit to the Spindle. Black fogs infested my dreams, deadening sight and sound and every sense. Suffocating, I flailed at the patchy night until it shattered into birds, thousand upon thousand of starlings fluttering, screeching, spiraling into a leaden sky, only to reveal Ambrose chained to the Spindle wall, screaming, his body limned in colored fire. Duplais stood between Ambrose and me, silver light streaming from his hands, creating a barrier I could not cross. Magic. Real magic. His magic. But before I could decide whether his power caused Ambrose’s torment or shielded me from it, another black fog engulfed me, and it all began again.
Well before sunrise, I lay listening to the mournful drizzle outside my window, cursing my choice to keep the potion from Ambrose. I should have allowed him to decide his own future.
Inevitably the palace day began. Ella greeted me with dreadful news. Physician Roussel had fallen prey to a virulent flux in the night. No one knew as yet if he would live or die.
Stunned, I raced into my clothes and joined the household in the queen’s salon. Eugenie and the ladies-in-waiting were attending Lady Cecile’s rites at the deadhouse. Without the senior ladies to manufacture errands or instigate activities, the maids of honor and other householders were at a loss for occupation. Exchanging fearful rumor must suffice until late afternoon, when the combined households and the local nobility would sit down at a feast in the ducessa’s honor.
Not long after my arrival, word arrived of a servant who had succumbed in the night to a virulent flux. Tales had already linked the red-hair
ed girl’s death with the physician’s illness. The kitchen servants were in terror of an epidemic, examining one another’s tongues and dosing themselves with saffron and teas made from pomegranate, sage, and white oak bark. The world seemed mantled in dread.
I could not force myself to conversation. Could not settle. Not even reading could tempt me on such a day. Though I grieved for the dead girl and hoped the best for the kind physician, it was fear for my brother had me pacing.
My goodfather was no tyrant, but a strong, pragmatic, and enlightened king. Thus, like a fool, I had believed my brother safe in the Spindle. Agitated by confinement and restriction, yes, but never deprived of the most basic comforts. Never in physical danger. For certain, never so ignominiously, so vilely, abused. What in the name of all saints was I to do?
I considered another appeal to Lord Ilario, or perhaps directly to Eugenie herself, who had been willing to dispatch her servant to succor my mother. But Eugenie and Philippe were estranged, and no one but the king himself could set Ambrose free or, at the least, commit him to less odious confinement. Logic insisted I must appeal to the king yet again.
An ornate writing table sat in a remote corner of the room, set with jade inkpots cleverly carved in the shapes of elephants, and an ivory monkey embracing a brass pot of quills. But a quick investigation determined the desk and its charming accoutrements entirely decorative. What I would have given for a hammer to smash the useless thing!
“. . . claimed it was a couchine!” The word snatched at my attention, as two women strolling the perimeters of the salon arm in arm passed within range of my hearing. “So like a doctor to share food with a servant. Do you know the disgusting things physicians do?”
A shared couchine . . . a red-haired serving girl . . . Physician Roussel . . .
My skin broke into a fevered sweat. As if it hovered in the air before me, I could see the steaming couchine on its flowered plate. Intended for me. But I had sent it back: Return it to Physician Roussel or have it yourself. And so the girl must have done. And they had shared it. And she had died. Truth glared at me like a skull and bones. Poison.