The Soul Mirror

by Carol Berg

  Never had I been so unsure of what future awaited me. Did I carry Mondragon magic in my veins? Was it true that the rocky slopes of Gurmeddion damped the talents of the blood? To someone like Lianelle or my friend of the mind such a fate would surely feel like suffocation. My own suffocation would be of another kind.

  My head a muddle of faces, fears, and the day’s bloody images, my stomach churning, I rounded the corner into the long passage.

  “Damoselle.”

  Cold sweat rippled across my skin as fingers plucked at my sleeve. A man’s figure stepped from the shadows. I jerked away, slamming my back to the passage wall and fumbling for my knife.

  “Physician!” The pooled lamplight revealed Roussel’s intelligent gray eyes and his black curls threaded with white. Ghostly kings, the Aspirant, Dante, assassins . . . there were a number of men I’d no wish to encounter in the night watches.

  “Shhh.” He drew me into the Rose Room and closed the door behind us. A single lamp burned on the writing desk. “Wouldn’t want anyone to catch a m-maid of the royal b-bedchamber having a middle-night assignation with the stammering physician.”

  “You’ve no idea how close you were to having my dinner on your shoes, sonjeur. You should be sleeping. And so should I. I can scarce summon a thought.” My eyes stung. The lamp’s flame seemed to heighten the stink of herbs and incense that clung to our clothing.

  “But you said you needed to c-consult me. Friends are rare in this place just now.”

  I cradled my arm, its incessant throbbing but one misery amid overwhelming exhaustion. “This can likely wait.” Though my friend had advised not. Pleasure at the remembrance of his concern heated my cheeks.

  “The arm, yes? I’ve noticed you favoring it all day. And you seem fevered. How did you injure it?”

  “It got tangled in a rope this morning,” I said. “Yesterday morning. Accidentally.”

  The physician settled me in the padded chair, turning it around where I could rest my arm on the writing table. He drew up a stool for himself, pulled on a pair of spectacles, and unlaced my sleeve. Rusty blood streaked the linen winding. As he unpinned and unwrapped the bandage, his every touch made me wince.

  “Tangled in a rope? Accidentally?” He stared down at my battered limb—swollen, purple flesh scored by at least ten angular lacerations—thin black lines bordered by angry red. “My d-dear young lady, do you think I am an imbecile?”

  His skeptical expression as he glanced over the top of his spectacles sparked an unlikely inclination to laugh. My head spun. The lamplight swelled and receded. “Perhaps it was not accidental. Have you experience with magical injuries?”

  “I’ve seen very few injuries that could not be explained by simple science or stupidity,” he said. “B-but, then, I took up medical studies only in the past few years, so I can’t claim d-decades of experience.” The physician produced a magnifying lens from his satchel and examined my chevronlike injuries. Brow knotted, he probed gently with a thin bronze implement. “And truthfully, I’ve never seen anything qu-quite like this. There appear to be . . . fibers . . . embedded in the lacerations, yet they—”

  He pulled out several more implements, some squares of clean linen, and a mounting mechanism for the magnifying lens. With both hands free, he peered through his lens and used tweezers and a small blade to probe one particularly angry wound.

  “Hold very still, damoselle. This may sting.”

  Tired as I was, every prick felt like a sword cut. But I held still. Before very long, Roussel picked a sheet of writing paper from the stack and deposited something on it. He shifted the focus of his magnifier to the paper and invited me to look through the lens.

  A black fiber, a few millimetres in length, was clearly visible on the cream-colored paper. Roussel passed me one of his probes. “Use that to touch it.”

  I did so, and the hairlike thread curled like a live thing. And then it uncurled and lay still, no matter how I poked it. But when I touched the fiber with my finger, it writhed and stung and adhered to my flesh until Roussel picked it off with his tweezers and scraped it back onto the page. I shuddered and scrubbed at my fingertip.

  “Rope, you said? ” The physician dabbed at the bead of blood that marked the site of his probing. “How in the name of all d-daemons did that get into your arm in Castelle Escalon?”

  “From a crossbow bolt,” I said, mesmerized by the black thread, even after he shifted the lens mount back into place and began to probe another wound. “The bedeviled rope was attached. I’d gone out to meet a friend.”

  His hands stilled. “A friend who brought attackers with crossbows?”

  His kind efforts deserved an answer. “The attackers were after him, not me.”

  “Stars’ glory, why? Was he—? Oh.” He swallowed his question in such a hurry, he almost choked. He bent his head to the work. “P-pardon. Not polite to pry into family secrets at such an hour of the morning,” he said softly, extracting a third and fourth remnant of the black cords in quick succession.

  “He was not my brother.”

  “Of course.” I could see only his thick curls as he bobbed his head in acceptance.

  But the ensuing silence pricked at me. “A young man came to tell me that my sister had killed herself apurpose. He didn’t think it something to write in a letter.”

  “Ah, damoselle, I’d heard of your tragic loss.” Roussel’s sympathy threatened to sap my anger. I couldn’t afford to wallow in guilt and grief.

  “Unfortunately he could not tell me why. Or who pursued him with such weapons as this. Perhaps he has family enemies.” Perhaps . . . though I knew it was no such thing.

  “Did your friend survive?”

  “I don’t know. We took different paths to get away.” Trusting Roussel with my life was one thing; trusting him with Guerin’s was another. He seemed to understand that.

  “Whoever he was, I’ll say he has w-wicked enemies. You’re going to tell me this is sorcery, aren’t you, and not some alchemical marvel ignited by the temperature of your skin?” Another black fiber dropped onto the paper.

  “I’ve lost sight of the line between science and magic,” I confessed. “But the cord is Mage Dante’s work. I saw a coil of it in his laboratorium today.”

  This time shock popped his head up. “Stars above us, what were you doing there?”

  “Lady Antonia sent me to fetch him to the queen’s chamber. Believe me, I’d never venture there otherwise.”

  The physician shook his head and went back to his work. “I wouldn’t have p-picked you for Dante’s friend, though Duplais claims the mage is an intelligent man. I hear that about you, too: languages . . . exotic cultures . . . mathematics. Physics and astronomy, too, no doubt, if you know of the celebrated de Vouger and his theories.”

  “My family valued education,” I said, drowsiness loosening my tongue. “My father corresponded with de Vouger. Called him the most brilliant man of science of our day.”

  “I’ve heard that as well.”

  I was almost asleep by the time he finished removing all the remnants of the black cord from my arm. He opened a narrow-necked brown bottle and sponged an oily, foul-smelling liquid over the wounds, now pocked with his tiny incisions. By the time he was done, my arm felt as if I’d been stung by a giant bee. Other than that and an overall weariness, I felt better than I had since the coils first constricted my arm.

  “No need to bind it, I think,” he said as I started to reinstall the linen bandage. “The bleeding’s stopped, and air will be good for healing.”

  I relaced my sleeve. Roussel wiped his instruments with turpentine and packed them away.

  “Thank you, sonjeur,” I said, rising to leave. His calm demeanor was surely as healing as his capable hands. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am.”

  “It was my pleasure.” He glanced up from his medicine case. “I suppose I must now offer my felicitations on your coming nuptials. Though surely the gentleman must be congratulated more thoroughl
y.”

  For Roussel, I would not pretend. “No felicity is possible in this match.”

  “The name being bandied about the household leads me to agree. Damoselle, you must use whatever means you have to stop it. I’ve heard tales of this man. . . .”

  “I, too,” I said. “I’ve appealed to my goodfather. He can stop it.”

  “And yet with your family connections, an appeal to the king cannot be a certain reprieve.”

  “I’ve resources. Information that should convince him.”

  “Ah, that’s g-good, then.” He dropped his eyes. His cheeks colored. “Please c-count me among those resources.”

  “You are very kind, sonjeur.”

  “You see no shame in my profession or my b-birth—or this c-cursed b-blight of my tongue. That’s refreshing. And you’ve p-prodded my thinking, which is a delight I’ve missed since leaving the academie. And so I must share this idea you’ve p-prompted.” He snapped the latch on his case. “Here, gentle damoselle, is what I see as the distinction between science and magic. Once a scientific principle is formulated, anyone can follow the steps and repeat the discovery. But in the case of magic, the connection between the formulated principle and the one who truly grasps it, who can make it come alive, is so intimate and so complex that perhaps only a few others in the universe can repeat the act successfully. Perhaps no one at all.”

  Which struck me as a profound explanation from someone who proclaimed himself a magical skeptic. I had no time to respond, even if I’d had the wit, for he raised his eyes to mine. He must have approved what he saw, for he smiled, crinkling the sun lines at his temples. Then he lifted my hand and kissed it. Firm. Warm. Fully of flesh and living breath. “Sleep well, lady.”

  A short time later, as I curled my arm under my pillow with scarce a twinge of discomfort, it occurred to me that perhaps Ganet de Roussel had more experience with magical injuries than he admitted to. And that, perhaps, he had already known I had an injury that needed tending, and a prospective husband I needed help with, and that he had purposely brought up Germond de Vouger’s name. Duplais was not the only quiet, well-spoken person in this palace who might be lonely in his chosen work. Next time I encountered the physician, I might ask him if he had finished his work with night-blooming plants and come again into the light.

  I drifted off to sleep, smiling, grateful that a human man’s kiss had supplanted the whispered breath of King Soren’s ghost.

  CHAPTER 32

  25 OCET, BEFORE DAWN

  “Damoselle Anne!”

  Moonshine glared in my eyes. I threw my arm up to block the light, only to bump into a warm, solid barrier. The jarring collision set the moon wavering.

  “Forgive this intrusion. I need you to wake, damoselle.” The whisper came from somewhere beyond the unsettled moon, beyond the hand tapping my shoulder.

  Waking quenched a flooding pleasure. The hand was not Roussel’s. A forest of dark curling hair backed the physician’s hand. This one—thin fingers, nails stained with ink—displayed fine, light brown hair and a gray-blue mark that shimmered in the moonshine.

  I blinked. Not moonshine, but candlelight. And an interlaced S and V. The Savin family mark.

  “Duplais? ”

  His clothing brushed softly as he set his candle on the bedside table and crouched low enough to put his face on a level with mine. The sidewise light sculpted his narrow face and fine bones. He smelled of damp skin and soap. “I need your help. Are you awake?”

  “Yes.” I sat up, drawing the sheet close, as if the Royal Accuser might read my immodest dreams. Movement set my mind functioning. “Great Heaven. Eugenie . . .”

  “The queen remains in her unnatural sleep. No worse. But I must leave the palace for a few hours, half a day at most, and need my absence disguised. I can’t divert Ilario while he stands watch with Antonia, so I’ve come to you.”

  “You’re leaving? ” I sat up straighter, appalled. “This plot is ripe enough to burst. I don’t care if the pastille only made her dizzy. They’ve done this to Eugenie to keep her apart from the king, to keep her here, where they raise a revenant king who visits her in a bedchamber bedecked with fertility charms.”

  “Fertility, yes. But you think . . . with Soren? Not possible . . .” Yet his pause reeked of doubt.

  “The storm is almost on us,” I said. “Surely you sense it. And there’s so much more. Did you not get my message? The Aspirant is here. Even in the dark, when he believes no one is listening, he gloats that the universe will never be the same.” Somehow in middle-night, without distractions, the weight of the Aspirant’s threat near crushed the breath from me. “We should be questioning every man in this house!”

  “Two thousand people move about this house in a day, three-quarters of them men.” His urgency to be gone set the air aquiver. “Questioning would serve nothing.”

  “What if the Aspirant is a Gautier?”

  “It wouldn’t help us identify him. I’ve theorized about Gautier or Mondragon survivors, made inquiries, followed leads that were little more than spidersilk, but all for naught. No portraits remain for comparison. I’ve uncovered no identifying characteristics. And to have lived so deeply hidden for so many years, no simple questioning is going to expose him. Why do you ask?”

  I told him about the pendant Dante had shown me in the Bastionne and the three keys Lianelle had kept with her spellworking particles. “I think she learned who he was. That’s why she had to die.”

  “Merciful saints! It would certainly explain a plot to upend the Sabrian kings—who issued orders to exterminate the remnants of his family, and tear apart the Camarilla—who agreed to terms with that king. The index to the Mondragon codices could have been passed down through the remnants of his family.” His words slowed. “If the Aspirant is the man we know as Michel de Vernase, that would explain how your sister could unravel their encryption so easily. And you . . .”

  He caught his breath. “Damoselle, you must not breathe a word of this possibility to anyone. No matter the differences in the world’s opinions of Gautieri works versus those of the Mondragons, the law makes no distinction. Any Gautier or Mondragon connection must be reported. This will take some untangling.”

  “My father is not Gautier.” Suspecting the far worse truth, my assertion rang hollow. “And he is not the Aspirant. . . .” I recounted everything I’d heard between Dante and the Aspirant in the Rotunda. “Dante so much as told me in the Bastionne that he aimed to trade places with the Aspirant—and also that he didn’t know his master’s identity. They’re rivals, just as you told me at the beginning. The bearded ‘prophet’ who can’t learn Dante’s spells is surely Kajetan. But who was Kajetan’s guest at Seravain, this down-on-his-luck nobleman?”

  “I’ve not a guess as to his identity, but, it’s curious; I think I’ve seen him.”

  Perhaps it was only the flicker of weak candlelight, but Duplais’ gaze seemed to have lost itself in the shadows, as if a revenant had manifested itself.

  “In the year I was two-and-twenty, I was stabbed, a severe wound that damaged me in many ways, far more than I understood at the time. Over many months Kajetan brought me back to some semblance of health. Someone else visited us frequently in those days. But as often as I’ve revisited those events, until Ilario passed on your message yesterday, I had wholly forgotten this visitor. Even now, the more I try to recall the man’s face or voice or anything about him, the more elusive the memory. Odd, yes? Hearing your tale, it makes more sense. Is he the Gautier, living in obscurity, using such magic to hide the existence of his family line? My illness occurred thirteen years ago. It could have been your father, but I’ve never believed him involved in conspiracy for so long a time. So, I’ve just sent off an inquiry to a cook who worked at Seravain in those days. It’s possible that you and the friend you so bravely defended have provided exactly the clue we need.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “We wait. And I go. Believe me, I’d not lea
ve for anything but this. I’ll return by midday and we’ll find a way to talk.”

  But I’d have none of it. “Yesterday as the queen lay bleeding, Dante was creating something dreadful in his chamber—as if he’d ripped a hole in the world and painted a curse over it, written in a hieroglyph I could not translate. Just looking on it left me feeling sick . . . violated. . . .”

  His agitation stilled. “A hieroglyph? An abstraction, you mean. Lines and colors, shapes without obvious meaning? He showed you such a thing?”

  “He didn’t know I was there. But yes. He knelt in that abominable circle and the thing hung above him, as if woven into the fabric of the air. When I interrupted him, it vanished. What was he doing? You know, don’t you?”

  Like a sculptor’s chisel, pain recrafted Duplais’ face, leaving the creases and tightness of a far older man. He pressed stained fingers to his forehead. “Spellwork, of course, though I’ve no idea what spell in particular. In the days we worked together, he showed me something like. His insights . . . Glory, he is so gifted, though he wears no mark and swore to me he carries no blood-family inheritance. I don’t know what it means that you could see one of these patterns without him explicitly showing you.”

  Perhaps my cursed blood enabled me to see Mondragon spellwork.

  “I can get the book of rites, Duplais. I’ll bleed all over it if I have to, and you can read it and tell me what it means. We must know what they’re planning.”

  “Do you imagine Dante will allow you to walk in and take a book they’ve killed for?” Pain sharpened his words. “And what would he do when he finds it missing?”

  “I promise he’ll never see me.”

  “Even if that was possible . . . think. The Aspirant plans to work this rite. But what if the book fails to reveal what form their chaotic vision will take? Do they plan to create weapons that drive bottomless holes in the earth to swallow their enemies, or that incite plagues of rampaging beasts? Do they plan to recruit the dead to go to war with them? If the book doesn’t tell us and our precipitate actions push them deeper into hiding, we’ll not know when or where or in what form they’ll strike.”