The Soul Mirror

by Carol Berg

  Roussel, sick himself, could not have been the poisoner. Yet he had sent me the pastry . . . or had he? A gentleman had sent it, the red-haired girl had said, and I had assumed that person to be the amiable physician. But others could have witnessed our exchange about the pastries. And now the girl was dead, unable to say if I had returned the plate to the same gentleman who intended it for me.

  Hand pressed to my lips, I fled the room, caring naught for protocol, for duty, or for Duplais, perched on a stool next to the door, absorbed in his journal. Any man or woman in that chamber could have dispensed poison in the couchine. Here, child. Leave that plate for a moment and fetch me a cup of tea. Or, Trade me that little pastry for this larger one, girl. I’ve not touched it; none will mind. Tell her a gentleman sent it. The child would have obeyed the villain, just as she had me. And now she was dead. Like my sister. Like Cecile. Like Ophelie de Marangel and all those other victims four years ago and who knew how many since.

  “Ah, Damoselle Anne!” Chevalier Ilario’s chirruping greeting as I entered the passage struck my clamorous spirit as the scrape of steel on glass. His mustard-striped taffeta scorched my eyes. “Your felicitous family reunion, was it satisfactory?”

  “I must beg your indulgence, lord chevalier. Please excuse me.”

  “Certainly. I only wondered—”

  Rudely, I left him gaping. I owed him every courtesy. Of everyone in this horrid place, he had shown a willingness to aid me. But to thread the needles of conversation was beyond me just now. Someone wanted me dead.

  Grieving for the red-haired child and praying the Pantokrator’s angels to succor the kind physician, I sped through the east wing, unable to still my shaking no matter how tight I wrapped my arms.

  So distraught. So afraid . . .

  It’s nothing.

  Clearly not. Is it the voices in your head?

  Only then did I realize what was happening. The intruder had joined me again, nudged me gently, and without thought I had responded.

  “No, no, no, no!” My hands gripped my temples. “Go away!”

  The door inside me closed, and he was gone. But it was not silent inside my skull. Saints’ mercy, the voices were still there, potion or no.

  Choking down a cry, I broke into a run, passing the turn to my own room. I needed to escape these poisonous walls and this growing strangeness in my head. I sped down the broad stair and into the window gallery.

  A movement just ahead of me. A startled face whipped round—a pale and dark smear. “Hold up—ungh!”

  The collision was unavoidable. A hard, solid point struck just beneath my breastbone.

  Objects went flying. The world blurred. The pain in my middle bent me in two. I could not cry out. Could not breathe. Could. Not. Breathe.

  The face swam before my own. Words. A laugh aborted. Hands fumbled at me as I crumpled. Awkward . . . slipping . . . dying . . . The solid collision of head and the hard ground scarce registered.

  “Damoselle Anne . . . hold on . . . easy . . . easy.” As if from the bottom of a well.

  Cold marble held my back. Dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . stupid girl . . .

  With a painful whoop, my lungs sucked in air; then I was coughing and curling up to soothe my bruised middle.

  Cold fingers tapped nervously at my cheek, and an arm slipped tentatively around my shoulders. “Damoselle, forgive me. I just stepped out. Wasn’t watching. Do tell me you’re all right.”

  He helped me sit up. Crossing my arms tight across my breast, I blinked away the blur and looked up. Mage Dante’s mournful assistant knelt before me, aghast.

  “Saints Awaiting! What’s happened?” a second man called from behind me.

  “Only a small collision, lord chevalier. Knocked the wind out of her. I’ll see to her.”

  The sorcerer helped me to standing. Too busy inflating my burning chest to speak, too shaken to repudiate his attentions, I allowed him to lead me down a passage and sit me on a stool behind a writing table littered with books and papers. “Stay here. I’ll fetch something. Only a moment. You’re not going to topple off?”

  I managed a positive finger wag, confident of remaining upright only because he’d propped my hands on the table. He wrenched at the latch on a lower pane of a tall window. Damp air bathed my face as he scurried off in the direction we’d come. Concentrating on moving air in and out, I dared not turn my aching head to see where he’d gone.

  He was back in moments with a cold wet cloth that he dabbed at my forehead.

  “Does this help? I’ve always heard damp cloths, but I’m thinking perhaps you should be lying down.”

  “One. Moment,” I whispered. Gradually the world was coming back into focus and the cramping behind my ribs was easing. I straightened my back a little and kneaded my midsection. He wore a gray academic gown, not spiked armor, and he carried no pike or bludgeon. “Don’t know what hit me so hard.”

  He blanched and stuffed the wet towel into my hand. “Oh, daemon spawn! I’ll be back!” And he raced off again.

  Holding the towel to my somewhat clearer head, I glanced around at where he’d brought me. The writing table sat along the wall of a passage, lit and cooled by the great window bay in its end wall. Odd, a desk in a passage.

  A rush of realization tinged with fear spurred me off the stool. I knew exactly where I was. This was the same corridor I’d visited two nights previous to spy on the murderous Lady Antonia.

  The panting young man reappeared and dumped eight or ten books onto the desk atop the rest. “Ah, you’re up. Most excellent. It was these injured you, I’m afraid,” he said, stacking his volumes more carefully. “You slammed into—Well, my studies take up a great deal of time I’d rather spend with ladies, but I’ve never had books come between a lady and me in so dire a fashion. I was on my way to the palace library to return this hodge-podge.”

  “My fault entirely.” I passed him the towel and began a retreat. “You’ve been very kind, Adept—”

  “Jacard,” he said, grinning and sweeping a bow, exposing a handmark in the shape of a winged lion. “Jacard de Viole. And you, of course, are Anne de Vernase, the queen’s racing maid of honor. Are you always in such a hurry?”

  “It must seem like it.” I glanced at the door behind him. A murderer’s door. Dante’s door, I believed. Could I make some advantage of this? Learn something? “Tell me, is your master truly so terrifying as he appears? When he looks at me, I feel . . . sullied.”

  “Everyone does.” Jacard bobbed his head, keeping his voice low. “But truth is, he’s mostly bluster and bald arrogance.”

  “But I’ve heard he’s responsible for inexplicable horrors—bird storms, fires, ruin.” Artifice could mask strength as well as weakness. It would take the Pantokrator himself to convince me Dante was not the most dangerous man I’d ever met.

  “Oh, he’s talented, no doubt. But he’s like a racing horse that shows all he’s got in the first half kilometre, then keels over.”

  “He’s despicable”—the memory of Eugenie’s dreams and my brother’s despair set fire racing through my veins, scalding limbs, cheeks, tongue—“cruel and vicious, abusing his servants, tormenting our queen, torturing helpless prisoners—” I clamped my mouth shut, cursing my incautious tongue.

  But Jacard heard exactly what I never should have spoken. He edged closer, his back to the mage’s door. “I heard you visited the Spindle yesterday.” Quiet. Eager. “Has my master done something awful there?”

  I near choked on my idiocy. Never could I allow anyone to believe Ambrose had identified his middle-night visitors. “I’ve certainly no evidence. My brother seems very confused. Cowed. But it’s clear that he has been . . . disciplined . . . with magic. Indeed, he is covered with scars and bruises, and I recalled that terrible incident at the Arothi reception where Master Dante beat—Well, it sounded something the same.”

  Jacard’s scarlet brow could have lit a cellar.

  I babbled on as if I hadn’t noticed. “I ask
ed my brother if Master Dante had done it, and the stubborn boy said he didn’t know, that he’d been told to keep his face to the wall. But the mage is the most frightening person I know and I attribute everything despicable to him. Why would a kind gentleman like you stay on? I understand Collegia Seravain has fine tutors and a library filled with magical texts. Surely you’d be welcome there.” Let Jacard think me a dimwit maiden.

  “Tedious schoolbooks and mediocre masters don’t suit me,” he said, purring like a barn cat at a saucer of milk. “But Dante . . .” He leaned close and dropped his voice. “I’ve a theory he possesses some source or device that makes his work more potent than other magic. There are tales of daemon-wrought jewels that can give a man power beyond imagining. Dante does his best to obscure it with this show he puts on.”

  “You don’t think—He’s not involved in this despicable practice my wretched father perpetrated?” Let feigned horror mask my own hunger for information.

  “Blood transference? He could be, though none will ever prove it. He’s wickedly clever at covering his tracks.” Jacard lifted a thin little volume from the desk, smoothing its crackled cover absently with his thumb. “You see, the puzzle is not just the power he uses to bind spellwork, but the nature of the work itself. His magic demonstrates complexities unknown in current practice. Someone needs to pay attention.”

  “So that’s why you stay?”

  “More than four years I’ve put up with him, despite the insults, the petty errands, the demeaning gossip. But every moment, I edge a little closer to uncovering his secrets. Soon, now, I’ll show them all that he’s not what he claims.”

  He forced a sheepish grin, seeming to realize he’d displayed more than he intended. He’d twisted the slender book so hard a binding stitch snapped.

  “I get a bit hot about the man, of course,” he said, tossing the volume back onto the heap of books. “Takes a bit of convincing not to take the next ship bound for Syanar. Instead, I’d best be off and get these back to the library. The mage has been on a rampage about history and symbols and blood-family genealogy of late. He devours more books than food, and with the same ferocity that he devours his servants. I’d like to throw the man and his precious books into a mine shaft. That would unnerve him right enough.”

  “My position here seems entirely to be sent on errands,” I said, ideas bumping and crowding one another. History . . . symbols . . . blood-family genealogy. The very things I needed to understand the scraps of evidence I held from Lianelle and Cecile. “Indeed, my duties take me to the library this morning. Could I express apologies for my heedlessness by delivering these for you?”

  “Honestly, I’d welcome the relief,” he said, astonished and pleased. “I’ve a tenday’s work he’s expecting done by this evening. But are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”

  I breathed deep and felt only a slight bruising. “Now my lungs recall their duties, I seem quite well. I’m happy to help. Please indulge me.” I held out my arms.

  With mumbled doubts and repeated solicitations, he transferred an armload of books and bundled scrolls to me. The collection was more awkward than heavy.

  I didn’t swallow the purity of Jacard’s motives—his willingness to risk proximity to a such a dangerous man because someone needed to “keep watch” on him. Jacard wanted Dante’s knowledge to elevate his own position. But that was a very human aim, ordinary and understandable. One thing certain: He despised Dante as much as I did. The adept could be a most useful acquaintance.

  “Do take care, Adept. You’re a braver soul than I.”

  He bowed, momentarily sobered. “And you, damoselle. I’d be pleased to encounter you under circumstances involving no violence. Slow your steps, perhaps?”

  Vowing to do just that, I returned to the window gallery at a more deliberate pace, and with one suspicion confirmed. The laboratorium with the grand windows, the apartment where Lady Antonia had gone to meet her partner in murder, belonged to Master Dante.

  I reversed my earlier course and headed for my bedchamber. Running away would accomplish nothing for the dead girl or the physician or any of those who awaited justice.

  Jacard’s estimate of Dante’s work intrigued me. Complexities of magic unknown in current practice . . . There it was again, the hint of some internal dispute fueling these events. Had Lianelle and Lady Cecile stumbled on something deeper—a war already being waged between factions of the Camarilla? Dante might have been summoned to Seravain to uncover why a rival had killed Lianelle or to mask the circumstances of her death. His destruction of the Bastionne could be a remnant of such an internecine battle.

  Duplais could be a participant in the war, too, proclaiming himself a failure at magic to deceive some rival faction. For I had seen his empty fingers create a barrier to turn away the attacking birds . . . and the brilliant light he’d shot at swarming rats. What could I call it but magic?

  Magic. Like a mighty fortress wall undercut by sappers with picks and knives, my long-held denial was on the verge of collapse. Twisting the possibilities of mechanisms or alchemistry to explain Duplais’ deeds or how Ella and Antonia had looked straight through me had become more difficult than the admission: Some spells worked. And if so, then, like any objects of value, they could cause a war.

  Magical rivalries did not explain Antonia’s interest in the matter or the vile manipulation of Eugenie’s dreams. Perhaps these were but distractions from the villains’ real purposes. And none of this explained why my father remained alive. He had been convicted as the daemonic Aspirant, the perpetrator of the grand conspiracy to overturn my goodfather’s reign. What further use had his captors for him? Or for my brother?

  The answer must be found in Lady Cecile’s scribbled diagrams, and in the books Lianelle had read, the magic she had worked from them, and the magical key she had sent me. The key to what?

  A serving lad halted in midstride, gawking as I topped the stair. Oddly, he didn’t offer to take my armload of books. Two kitchen girls sped past, but not without a glare.

  The encounter with Jacard had set me on course again. Once returned to my bedchamber, I took up my pen to compose the letter to my goodfather. While acknowledging a sovereign’s historic right to constrain the grown son of his avowed enemy, I protested the particular restrictions imposed in the name of prison discipline. I did not mention Pognole by name, nor detail the most shameful abuses I only suspected. But mentions of hooks and scars and the particular deprivations and degradations I had witnessed could not but lead any intelligent man to certain conclusions.

  The letter signed and sealed, I rang for Ella. As I waited for her, I examined Dante’s books. They might give me some insight regarding his areas of interest. The collection included an herbal, a genealogy of the kings of Sabria, and several general histories of Sabria, including a basic treatise on the Blood Wars that I had read years ago in my own studies. I was surprised to discover one of the books to be a brand-new scientific text on the eye, based on the most modern theories of the transmission of light through the air, glass, and water. Another, more appropriate to my ideas of a mage’s studies, was titled The Proven Magicks of Gemstones. Though the crudely stitched codex had innumerable colored sketches of gems and settings, the text was little more than an agglomeration of folklore and outlandish superstitions. I doubted even a sorcerer would find it useful.

  The last volume puzzled me the most. Divine Harmonies and Discords of the Air seemed to record a dry, philosophical dispute on whether music was a specific gift of the Creator to humankind, provided whole and entire as a means to guide us through Ixtador’s gates, or whether it was entirely man-made, a bold insolence that created a breach in the wall of Heaven. I could not envision Mage Dante caring for such pedantry.

  A tap at the door announced Ella. “Damoselle?”

  “I’ve a letter to post,” I said, jumping up from my chair. “I was hoping you might prevail upon your brother again, as I’d like it sent outside the common way.”

&
nbsp; “Don’t know,” she said. “It’s a risk for him.” The girl’s freckled face was composed as always. But her back was stiff, her eyes averted. Something was wrong.

  “Is there bad news?” I said. “Is it the physician? Have more fallen ill?”

  “No more’ve sickened, damoselle. And I’ve heard the physician recovers, which is a relief to all but poor Naina and her mam. Is there any other service you need of me?”

  After a whispered thanksgiving, I raised Ella’s dropped chin. Suspicion had turned her gray eyes to stone and plump lips to a hard line.

  “This Naina brought me a couchine,” I said. “She told me a gentleman sent it. I believed that gentleman to be the physician, and the thought . . . gladdened . . . me, as he has treated me kindly, and I’ve not had a gentleman friend for a very long time. But I’d had a fright that morning and couldn’t eat, so I told her she could take it back to the physician and taste it herself, if he didn’t want it. She was obedient, and I never imagined that the sweet might have come from a person who might wish me harm. You must believe me, Ella. Never, ever would I do something to harm an innocent girl. Never.”

  “Didn’t think it,” she said softly. “Didn’t want to think it. But Eune the footman said he saw you give her the plate, and she carried it straight to the physician. And she was such a good girl. She’d never have took it to eat on her own.” Ella swallowed a sob, the first chink I’d ever seen in her servant’s armor.

  I threw my arms around her, drawing her sturdy warmth to my breast. I had relied on her so much, and she was so young. “Her death is vile and unjust,” I said. “Creation’s balance seems wholly askew, and you just want to scream at Heaven.”

  Ella’s stiffness melted away in my arms. When her sobs quieted, I nudged her to arm’s length. “Tell me, is someone collecting a handsel for Naina’s family? I’d like to offer something for it.”