by Carol Berg
Pride of intellect and prejudgment. I almost laughed. How often had Mama warned me of the same? Had Duplais addressed that confession to me? Did he suspect that his meticulous case against my father was flawed?
“I would like that very much, lad.”
“And I must ask”—Duplais dropped his eyes—“might you provide us escorts for our return to the palace? These quiet hours are often the most dangerous. I was sent down in such a hurry I failed to arrange proper protection for the lady.”
“Certainly. Give me a moment. Damoselle”—Mage Kajetan inclined his head politely—“if I learn anything of your brother’s fate, I’ll do what I can for him. We’ll hope he merely took advantage of some unrelated assault on Warder Pognole and will soon be returned to his goodfather’s safekeeping.”
The vibrant prefect’s departure left a void in the room. Did no one else in the world feel his contempt for us all?
Duplais patted his pocket, nodding to me and to Angloria’s desk, his unspoken message clear.
To leave Lianelle’s book behind, knowing it the key to these mysteries, was wretchedly difficult. Yet the trap was obvious, now I had sense to see it. I had no wish ever to return to the Bastionne Camarilla.
“You’ll have another chance,” Duplais said softly. “Keep pushing. You’ve thrown them off balance. Tonight they made a series of terrible mistakes, and mistakes will undo them. Have you guessed who recommended Pognole to the Overseer of Prisons?”
Only one name made sense. Someone of devious purpose and high influence. “Antonia?”
His head jerked assent. “Be very careful. But do not count on me to help you again. I’ve exposed far more than I wish tonight. Someone trustworthy will contact you in the coming days, offer help, advise you.”
A trustworthy contact! The idea sparked an excitement . . . and relief. . . I could not hide. “Who?”
He shook his head. “You’ll recognize him, as you’ve already spoken. If you believe yourself in imminent danger or discover something truly significant—something that changes everything—tie a love knot to your window at sunset. Just understand, when you take that step, forcing a contact, you’ll put lives at risk.”
“Why haven’t you said something before? I’ve floundered . . . so stupidly. I’ve needed help.”
“I’d no way to judge your intents or true loyalties.”
Simple. Obvious to a person who had not allowed prejudice to cloud her judgment. “This storm that’s coming . . . magic . . . the king . . . the queen, too . . . it’s the Blood Wars all over again, isn’t it? Just as you said at the trial. And now they’ve got my brother. What must I do?”
“Hold your secrets close,” he said. “Pretend—live—as if we had never spoken. Right now you are poison, a traitor’s daughter of unknown talents who could be anyone’s tool or anyone’s spy. Every eye in Merona is trained on you, which is not a bad thing at all for the rest of us. We all have our own parts to play in the search for truth. Unfortunately, most must be played alone.”
A suspicion nipped at me then, a distracting idea that I could ill afford to consider until I was alone and safe. I wished he would look at me, allowing me to learn more by what I could read in his face. Perhaps revealing even so much as he had put his “part” at risk. On this night a righteous strength and conviction lay behind his words, leaving me satisfied. Only for the present, however, as his every answer opened up a thousand other questions.
Reluctantly I placed the little volume on the desk, brushing my fingers over the cover. My punctured finger left a thin film of blood on the faded gilt of the title. “Andragossa,” I whispered, little more than a breath, more a determined wish than an intentional act.
Falling . . . falling . . . My head spun, stomach surging into my throat, as if I had jumped from the tower. The faded gilt characters writhed and twisted beneath my fingers.
I blinked, then snatched my hand from the book, thumb scrubbing the blood smear away.
Duplais whirled about. “What have you—?”
His demand was cut short, as two Bastionne adepts, neither of them familiar, appeared in the doorway. “We’re here to escort you out, sonjeur. There’s mounts waiting.”
“You said you wished to pen a message of appreciation to Prefect Angloria,” said Duplais, peering over my shoulder, his body rigid as a steel post.
The cool leather displayed naught but gibberish.
“I . . . yes,” I said, trying not to allow tremors to show. A message to leave with the book.
I borrowed paper and ink and scribbled my thanks for the prefect’s even-handed investigation of my situation, adding a note that I had inadvertently carried away a book Master Dante had asked me to translate. As the book was wholly illegible, I chose to leave it behind on her desk.
Making use of the lamp, I dripped a blot of wax on the folded paper, and handed the sealed missive to a door guard as we followed the adepts out of the Bastionne. Let Dante answer Angloria’s questions about an encrypted Mondragon book.
AS THE LIGHT GRAYED AND the city began to stir, Duplais and I rode up the Plas Royale in silence. The Camarilla aides held much too close behind for us to speak freely.
We dismounted inside the palace gates and Duplais dismissed the two adepts. Only when we walked under the gate tunnel on our way into the busy inner bailey did we have a moment out of sight and hearing of the world. “Thank you, Duplais. I see now what I should have recognized much earlier.”
“I’ve not been able to trust my instincts for a while,” he said there in the dark. “I’m happy to see they were correct in your case.”
“One question.” I could not leave it unspoken, because if I heard the wrong answer, I must reclaim what grace I had yielded Duplais this night. “Your mentor . . .”
“Thirteen years ago, Kajetan saved my life, my sanity,” he said with urgency and conviction, as if he had guessed what I wanted to ask. “He is my true father, a man who fights with words, not bloody lancets, who seeks to inspire by the power of ideas, not fear and chaos.”
“But do you trust him?”
Our footsteps rang on the cobbles. “Saints forgive . . . no.”
Honesty won him the night’s prize. “Dante’s book is titled Diel Schemata Magna,” I said. The words unmasked by my blood were seared into my mind with fiery script. “The Book of Greater Rites.”
CHAPTER 21
20 OCET, MORNING
“ Sante Ianne,” said Duplais, scarce breathing. “Tell no one of this . . . of the words . . . or that you recognized them . . . or how. For your life, lady.” He began to move away.
“That book holds their plan, doesn’t it?” I said, blocking his path before he could run away again. I wanted answers in return for my revelation.
“Possibly. Now—”
“Saint’s mercy, Duplais, my sister died for that book!” I moved to block him again, feeling his rigid frame centimetres away from me. He would have to strike me to move past. “Tell me why. What do they plan?”
“Four years I’ve devoted to discovering that answer, and, saints forgive, I do not yet know.” His muted anger was directed inward, not at me. “We need to go. This isn’t safe. . . .”
The night beyond the portals of the gate tunnel spoke of the ordinary: a gate guard’s laugh, a sharp siege of barking followed by a cat’s yowl, the snap of torch flames and watch fires. Our escorts’ retreating hoofbeats were fading.
“Let the watchers think I fainted from fright,” I said. “Say whatever you like to whomever questions, but I must know why Lianelle died and what they want with my brother. I can help you. I will. I’ll do as you say: forget you, ignore you, learn what I can, be the worm wriggling on your fishhook. But these things I must know.”
“It’s rooted in history,” he said. “You have to understand the history first.”
“Then tell me.”
He retreated a few steps and pressed his back to the damp wall. The air thudded with his life’s pulse. Or perhaps it was my o
wn heart galloping, for his story came quiet and reasoned. “In all the centuries of their existence, the blood family named Mondragon produced very few written works. But among them were four codices, intended to testify to the supremacy of Mondragon magic over that of their greatest rivals.”
“The Gautier family.”
“Yes. One of the volumes, Diel Voile Aeterna, was an index to the other three, a listing of experiments and results gathered over generations. Diel Mechanika described how to make various enchanted devices—amulets, talismans, lenses, and the like. Diel Revienne recorded their learnings about necromancy, forever the most compelling perversion of the Mondragons. The fourth, Diel Schemata Magna, recorded certain rites developed in these investigations. Rites, in the magical sense, are complex constructions of multiple spells designed to accomplish a single purpose.” He paused on a questioning note.
“All right.”
“Together, these volumes detail the Mondragons’ investigation of death, life, and the voile aeterna, the eternal Veil that divides those divine demesnes. I’ve no idea what these particular rites were designed to do, but I believe it is—and has ever been—the Aspirant’s goal, the goal of this conspiracy, to break that book’s encryption and use the Mondragons’ great rite. That’s what’s coming.”
“To what end? A new king? Civil war? Anarchy?”
“I don’t know. At the least, they will cause some profound disturbance in the natural order—like these disturbing sights we see in Merona. But are those the goal or merely side effects? I’ve pieced together a story from Temple records and civil writs, from legends in Delourre and Arabasca, from every source I could tap without announcing my true interests to the world. Evidently, at the height of the Blood Wars, a Gautieri spy stole these four codices from the Mondragon fortress in Arabasca and took them to Collegia Magica de Gautier. The Gautieri had a habit of encrypting the books in their library to protect them from ill use. The stories I’ve unearthed—and these are not the matter of any official history, but tales passed down in Delourre, where Collegia Gautieri and its library once stood—say that the spy eventually turned traitor, and returned three of the four volumes to the Mondragons. Evidently he was caught and executed—buried alive—by the Gautieri before he could return the fourth. Here and there in the tale of these books and the Veil, enough to know it is no error, I’ve found reference to Ixtador.”
“But the Temple only proclaimed the teaching of Ixtador after the Blood Wars,” I said, “when the Mondragons and Gautieri were all dead.” The Pantokrator had imposed the realm of trial and journey between the Veil and Heaven as punishment for human savagery.
“So we’ve always been told. But the first mention is associated with the Mondragons, and only later crops up among the Gautieri.”
Smoke wafted through the tunnel, mingling with the odors of must and urine. So ordinary beside my companion’s dreadful tale. “Where are the other books?”
“Mage Gaetana gave Diel Revienne to Dante right before her arrest.”
My bones shivered. The Book of Return. Necromancy. Phrases from the histories I’d just read leapt into mind: The Mondragons wrenched the sun from the sky . . . trees curled back into the earth . . . arrows reversed upon the archers . . . the dead walked. History told a story, exaggerated, skewed by the politics of the writer or the prospective reader, but rooted in fact. And now rumor claimed Dante raised the dead.
“Diel Revienne, Diel Mechanika, and your sister’s book were likely part of a collection I retrieved from a chest discovered in a Mondragon ruin in Arabasca.”
“Stolen from the Collegia Seravain vault by Mage Gaetana,” I said. “You used the theft as evidence against her at the trial.”
“Yes. But the devices she created, like the spyglass named in evidence at your father’s trial, were flawed, inexpert, as if created from hearsay and not the true source. Dante has done better.”
“So he has Diel Mechanika—The Book of Devices—as well, and can read them.”
“Yes. Somehow, using sheer, stubborn magic he can unravel the layers of Gautieri and Mondragon encryption, which his partners cannot. Yet when I saw him working at it four years ago, the translation required debilitating expenditures of power. Your sister, it seems, found an easier way. If I’d had any idea . . . saints’ mercy. And now you.” He drew a breath of resolve, as if venturing an exceedingly difficult task. “So, you can work this kind of magic, too?”
“No! She sent me a spellkey. That and the blood from my thumb unscrambled the title.”
“Which explains what Dante wanted with you.” The cogs and gear wheels of Duplais’ mind spun and meshed. I waited for him to explain.
“Once she broke the layers of encryption, your sister must have worked a new encryption spell of her own, keying it to you by using her own blood. We must pray her encryption talents were as robust as those she used to decipher the Gautieri locks.”
“What of the fourth book?” The index that put it all together.
“Diel Voile Aeterna, the index, must be the volume the traitor spy did not reclaim for the Mondragons. It’s logical that he would leave the summary volume until last. I’ve a mind that the list of experiments and results in the index gave the instigator of this conspiracy the very notions that sparked it: lenses and mirrors that show us things we’re not meant to see, deadraising, magic powerful enough to create pits that swallow light, to drive birds and beasts mad. These things you’ve seen and others you’ve not.”
Which brought us back to Lianelle and her discovery. My turn to yield information. He had to know the truth. “My sister took the Book of Greater Rites from the vault at Seravain. From what she explained, I believe they were laid out precisely for her to find. Your mentor, this Kajetan, caught her in the vault on one of her visits to exchange books. She believed she had distracted him from her pilfering. But he killed her, didn’t he? Hand of the Creator, she trusted and honored and believed in him, and he killed her.”
Duplais did not respond, though I might have heard a mumbled curse.
I pushed harder. I believed history had erred in one respect. “Duplais, what mark does Mage Kajetan wear upon his hand?”
Duplais’ answer came so readily, it was clear he had anticipated my question. “A peregrine falcon, the symbol of excellence . . . of perfection in knowledge . . . of devotion to learning. Exactly as he has lived every day that I’ve known him. The Saldemerre mark is a very old one and strictly controlled. And it cannot be confused with either the dueling scorpions of Mondragon or the three keys of Gautier.”
“And what mark does the Aspirant wear?”
“At my first encounter, he wore gloves. When he bled me, I noted no mark, as your father wears none . . .”—he paused for a very long time—“but, in truth, I was in no state to be certain of anything.”
I came near crumbling at this simple, difficult admission, the first crack in Duplais’ case against my father. But I summoned an image of my brave sister and remained upright, controlling all but the gravel in my voice. “The Aspirant came to my brother’s prison in the night and infused Ambrose’s veins with some potion that drove him half mad. Though he, too, was too sick to recognize any mark on his hand, Ambrose indicated the man worked magic. Duplais, my father is not the Aspirant.”
Duplais’ face was but a pale blur in the dark as he moved me firmly . . . carefully . . . aside. “Do not blind yourself with false hopes. Even if another wears the Aspirant’s mask, which I am not yet ready to concede, the evidence against your father—evidence scribed in his own hand, evidence of his own acts and his orders to others—remains intact.” A brief, kind touch on my shoulder gentled the sting of his words. “Now you must go. Nudge. Push. Knock them off balance. Put me out of your head and wait for my messenger to contact you. I’ll do what I can to discover what’s become of your brother. With your help, we will sort this out.”
One more thing I had to be sure of. “Dante is not your man?”
“He was. Once.” Profoun
d weariness accompanied this admission, as if Duplais had long fought and lost the battle to arrive at it. “I hired him to spy on Orviene and Gaetana. He warned me from the first that he had no use for any of us. Yet I liked him. Believed we’d come to be friends. Then I betrayed his trust—a stupid, terrible, unredeemable mistake. Though I knew he walked a moral precipice, I did not believe a man of such brilliance, of such extraordinary insight into nature’s working, could be so brittle of soul as to let a friend’s error topple him from it. His crimes are my responsibility, and this sorcery he pursues drives him even deeper into the dark. Believe me when I say: However dangerous you imagine him to be, the truth is far worse. Do not engage him. Do not challenge him. Do not make yourself of more interest to him than you must inevitably be as your father’s daughter. Be dust at his feet. Now we go.”
The air stirred. Boots scuffed. When I stumbled from the tunnel’s mouth into the glaring torchlight of the inner courts, Duplais had already vanished.
A SHORT TWO HOURS’ OBLIVION separated the dread adventure in the Bastionne from my first morning as Eugenie’s maid of the bedchamber. Despite Ambrose’s disappearance, my father’s belongings in the Bastionne Camarilla, this mesmerizing Kajetan, so coolly explaining how my family had become pawns in a war, I had to keep my focus on gowns and hairbrushes. To retain my new position, my most promising avenue to learn what I needed, I had not only to satisfy the queen herself, but to convince her murdering harpy of a mother I was no threat.
The queen’s bed curtains were yet closed when I arrived at the royal bedchamber. A clinking noise drew me to the wardrobe room, where Lady Antonia was rearranging a shelf of scent bottles.
“Divine grace, my lady.”
She snapped her head around at my greeting. “Anne! I didn’t expect . . . Well, here you are.”