by Carol Berg
Cradling my hand, I scrambled onto the gallery deck. Blistering heat, dense white smoke, and licking flame barred the promenades on either side of the lounging pavilion. The only way to make it aft was to forge straight through the pavilion itself. Greedy flames licked at the sagging roof canopy and gnawed at the support poles. I took a deep breath and charged in.
Impossible. The smoke was blinding; the walls ablaze. I tripped over a couch and crashed to the decking. A drifting ribbon of flaming silk settled on my sleeve.
Rolling to the side, I slapped at the fire and scrabbled forward, straining to recall the room’s arrangement from my morning inspection. Around the low tables, over a divan, shove the chair aside.
New flames exploded before and behind. Searing, thundering, they drowned out the screams and wails that had guided me. Everyone on the barge could be dead for all I knew. Father Creator, no air here. My throat scorched; my eyes streamed and blurred. Which way?
Instinct clamored that my friends lay beyond the thickest battlements of white-hot flame. Near blind . . . panicked . . . I drove through the roaring wall. My feet stumbled on the aft steps. I scrabbled upward, and burst into the air, gasping and swatting at my smoldering hair.
The marqués and two deckboys were passing buckets of water to Haile and his steward, battling the encroaching flames on the port side. The dowager, half her body seared like roasted meat, wailed piteously. Ilario, pale hair and fine garments blackened, had stretched his long body over her to shield her from fiery debris as the flames crept ever closer. His head jerked up and his eyes widened as a post and crossbeam crashed beside me. The blazing fountain catapulted me forward. I curled in a knot, my seared lungs fighting for air.
Calls for help from the starboard promenade spurred me to my feet again. I doused a cushion in the river and beat at a towering wall of flame, ever more frantic as the cries became screams of mortal pain and terror. I might as well have been trying to snuff the stars in a middle-night sky.
The barge lurched and wallowed. The horizon spun. My boots slipped and I crashed to the deck. Coughing, breathless, I clutched my wrapped hand to my breast and pressed my head to the planks. The flames flared higher, engulfing the entire center structure beam to beam. I was no hero who could defeat an inferno. The agonized cries became mindless bleats until the thunder of flames silenced them. Please, saints and angels, let Maura . . . Philippe . . . Ilario . . . Dante . . . not be in there.
Portier, get up! The stern voice of conscience lifted my head from the blistering deck, just as a wind gust cleared a hole in the heavy smoke. Philippe sat wedged against a bulwark, his head bleeding, a charred beam crushing his middle. An unknown man in tattered garments was attempting to shift it. I scrambled across the steaming deck. “Sire, are you well?”
“See to the others,” mumbled Philippe, adding what strength he could muster as we hefted the beam and shoved it overboard. Wrapping his arms about his ribs, the king curled his head to his knees, coughing.
Another gust stirred the gray smoke. On the far side of the stern gallery, Orviene and Gaetana had laid out scraps of charred silk, a great deal of shattered glass, a palm-sized golden flask, a silver drinking cup, and a brass fitting from the ship. Using a rope, they had created a ritual enclosure about the particles and themselves. Gaetana knelt at one vertex of a triangle, the rope looped round her waist. Orviene stood at a second vertex, the rope wound about his arm. They had enlisted Maura, hair straggling, one shoulder bare and blistered, to support the third vertex of the enclosing triangle. I did not need to see Gaetana’s grip on a string of rubies twined around her fingers or Orviene’s focused concentration on the array to guess they had already infused a spell—something huge to require so elaborate a rite. The air crackled with more than fire.
Helpless rage consumed me. To charge into the middle of an ongoing ritual risked worse disaster. But Dante . . .
The mage, apparently unsinged, leaned against the stern rail between me and the other two, arms folded around his staff—doing nothing. Was he deaf? Blind?
“Dante!” I yelled. “The oarsmen are trapped. People are dying. The king is in peril.”
I could not tell if he heard me over the thunderous fire. His dark brows shadowed his eyes at such a distance. But he did not move.
Another explosion ripped through the holocaust, and I threw myself atop Philippe, expecting a scourge of fire and splinters. But the droplets that spattered my head and back did not burn. Cold, wet, soothing; the spattering quickly became a gentle drumming, as enchantment riddled my innermost being, and the sky brought forth a deluge.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
15 QAT 46 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY
Eight people died in the fire on the Swan: the two heralds, a botanist, one of the Fassid merchants, the bargemaster, and three oarsmen—one burned, two drowned. One rower was blinded by the explosion. The disfigured dowager was likely to die as well, sooner or later. Almost everyone suffered burns, many far worse than mine. The rain had saved our lives.
After the pleasure barge limped into port, King Philippe, the blood cleansed from his face, had proclaimed to the awestruck crowd that the Pantokrator himself had surely sent his blessed rain to douse the fires begun by a “faulty brazier” on Massimo Haile’s vessel. The king reminded his subjects that the glory of the event must not be sullied by an accident that could happen on any common day. The Destinne and her noble crew were safely launched on their noble voyage, giving honor to Sabria and bearing the dead infant prince on his journey to Heaven.
Beloved and honored as Philippe had been since his defeat of Kadr—unlike the Blood Wars, the kind of wholesome conflict that creates heroes—he soon had his people cheering. He walked all the way up to Castelle Escalon, as if to show himself uninjured and unafraid. I suspected he had cracked ribs and could not bear the jostle of riding. Along the way he distributed another barrelful of memorial coins imprinted with his dead son’s likeness on one side, and the words HONOR, REMEMBER, and DESTINNE scribed around a ship’s emblem on the obverse.
It took no time at all for the rumors to begin—that the fire had been no accident, that the celebration banners had been enspelled with the white waxy substance known as devil’s firework, that the queen’s mages had worked terrible spells before the fire, and that the queen’s absence meant—Some dared not complete their conclusion, but many others did, inside and outside the palace.
On the morning after the fire, a new chapbook showed up in Merona’s markets—and in many a courtier’s gloved hands. The story told of a Syan concubine who decided to burn her land’s emperor to bring back the spirits of her former lovers. That afternoon, the queen’s coach, transporting two of her ladies to the lace market, was battered by a barrage of rock-centered mudballs. Despite the crowded street, no witnesses to the incident could be found. If rumor and innuendo shadowed truth, the king would be able to stave off the hounds baying at his wife for very little longer.
Ilario summoned me to his apartment that evening. His barber had trimmed his scorched hair short, save for one fair lock that dangled over his right temple, hiding a raw red streak. Twirling an ivory-headed walking stick, he paced and fidgeted, entirely unlike himself, as we exchanged platitudes about the dreadful event.
“It is a grace the queen was not aboard the Swan,” I said. Head muddled and stomach churning from the incessant pain of my hand, I offered this sentiment entirely without innuendo.
Ilario slammed his stick onto a table so hard, the maple cane broke away and flew across the room, shattering a mirror. “She fell ill!” he shouted, and launched the ivory elephant that remained in his hand clear through the open door and off his balcony. “For her to sail would have been torture.”
“Certainly, Chevalier. Certainly.” His vehemence shocked me out of my sleepless stupor.
“And everyone in Merona knows it is customary for the queen to supply celebration banners.” Ilario’s ferocious kick buckled the leg of a delicate chair that likely cost ten ti
mes my year’s pay; then he snatched up a tasseled pillow and began ripping out its threads. “Anyone could have enspelled them. She herself stitched only the Destinne ensign. Others sewed and finished them.”
Great Heaven! Grim certainty infused my heart, alongside sympathy and sorrow for both husband and brother.
“Perhaps . . .” Ilario’s slender hands paused in their destructive agitation, and he made another circuit of his room. “Now Philippe has seen evidence of true sorcery, perhaps he will broaden his mind. Compromise. He and Michel forever scoffed at her requests for caelomancers or healers. That’s why Geni took it on herself to find help when Desmond fell so ill. If some mages are corrupt and wicked, it is no fault of the magic . . . or of my sister.”
“My lord, if you could persuade Her Majesty to allow us to question—”
“Don’t ask it!” He swung his long body around. “By the sainted Reborn, she’ll not do it for her husband; she’s certainly not going to do it for me. Her household is her only pride, her only demesne. Deeds of honor that can further her family’s progress through Ixtador must be her own. Not lent. Not granted by a husband. She will not yield control. And she will not be treated like a common thief.”
Of all the prattle that had fallen from Ilario de Sylvae’s lips in these past days, the sincerest and most sober were those that embraced his half sister. No matter his flighty ways, he cared deeply for her. And he was terribly afraid. Rightly so. No queen’s crown or wedding vow was proof against a charge of treason. I did not point out how unlikely it was for Philippe to compromise with Eugenie about anything after this disaster. Had her husband been any but Philippe de Savin-Journia, she would already have been in custody. So might Ilario, as well. He had arranged our presence on the barge.
“Lord Ilario, look at me.” I used the most commanding voice I could manage without splitting my skull.
He halted, startled, as if he’d already forgotten I was in the room.
“Tell me, lord chevalier, who prompted you to choose Massimo Haile’s barge for the king’s launch party?”
You’d have thought I’d just asked him why the Pantokrator created the world. “You did, Portier, or near enough. You said to do whatever I needed to keep the assassins off balance and ensure that you and the confounded Dante were near Philippe. No King of Sabria has ever graced a Fassid’s barge, and no mage and no minor secretary have ever accompanied the king to any such event. You don’t think Massimo—?”
The full import of my question struck him as a boot to the gut. He blanched and collapsed onto a silken divan that directly faced my own stool. “Merciful hosts . . . you think that I . . .”
“Certainly not. It’s only I must have answers for the king.” More ill by the moment, I could not answer further.
He peered closely at my face that felt as clammy as sweating cheese, then popped up from his seat. In moments he returned with restored composure, a small towel, and a vase stripped of its flowers.
“When I saw you burst from that hellish fire alive, I thought you must be one of the Saints Reborn, come to save us. Now you look as if we should cart you to the deadhouse.” He dipped the towel in the vase and slopped the cool, wet thing over my head. “Go to bed, Portier. And think. If I want Philippe dead, and Geni and me hanged at Merona’s gates, all I have to do is propose a game of stratagems and walk into his private study wearing a poison ring. His guards don’t even search me anymore.”
He tossed the emptied vase onto his silk divan, hauled me to my feet, and shoved me toward the door. “Philippe will never believe such scurrilous charges,” he said, “especially now Orviene and Gaetana have been redeemed—and such a justification of Eugenie’s wisdom that is. No, these events have been perpetrated by some rogue from Seravain. You must shift your inquiries there.”
And so was I stymied, as well. For, indeed, our structure of ill-informed suppositions had collapsed the moment Orviene and Gaetana followed the cursed banners onto the Swan and raised a rainstorm. The queen might still be the enemy Philippe feared, but our only magical suspects had saved the king, not slain him.
ILARIO RETIRED TO HIS COUNTRY house for a few days to recover his spirits and grow out his hair, so he said, but insisted I stay behind and work on his scientific exposition. “I want it held on the Anniversary—to honor Prince Desmond as the launch was meant to do. Mayhap it will blot out the taint of this wickedness. Eugenie will be pleased. Philippe, too.”
The Anniversary. Six-and-forty days away. Little more than a month to arrange a scientific and magical display “unequaled in this age.” I could not even begin.
My attempts to address our more important business were equally futile. Plagued with persistent pain and nausea, a lingering cough from the smoke, and an internal storm of guilt and failure, I could neither follow the confusing trail of evidence nor devise any stratagem to further our investigation—assuming Philippe wished me to continue. Every hour I expected a summons and a dismissal.
The echoed screams of those dying on the Swan ruined what sleep my sickness allowed, and a pernicious dread grew in me every hour. On the third night from the fire, I huddled on the floor in the corner of my bedchamber, my head buried in my arms. A familiar, seductive inner voice insisted there was no use forcing myself to impossible tasks, no use striving to be something I was not, no use eating or drinking or sleeping or breathing. . . .
Nine years it had been since failure had so unraveled me, since the day I had killed my father in defense of my own life. On that occasion, illness, guilt, and despair had come near finishing what my father’s knife had begun. Past, present, and future had faded to gray. My dreams of destiny had withered, replaced by blinding headaches and unfocused anxieties. A month it had been until I could speak my own name; two until I could engage in conversation; six until I could complete a simple task on my own; a year until I had relieved my mentor of his burden and resumed responsibility for my own life.
Not this time, I mumbled, as the sky lightened yet again. You’ve sworn loyalty and perseverance to souls other than your own. If you cannot move forward, go back and start again.
To begin, I drafted a letter to my solicitor, expressing a desire to locate the family of a disgraced guard captain and direct the paltry thread of my family allowance to its sustenance. It would be enough to stave off starvation. I sought out Verger Rinaldo and told him of a muddled “vision” of a family in danger, mentioning naught but Riverside and a girl child and a guardsman/father gone missing. He promised to investigate. If Gruchin’s family were to be found, he would do it.
Then I returned to the more difficult task. The keys to Ophelie’s torment and Michel de Vernase’s fate must surely lie at Seravain. To travel there unremarked, I needed Dante’s cooperation. Yet conscience demanded I tell him what I thought of a gifted man who could hear fellow humans suffer and die without so much as raising his hand. Such frankness would risk our partnership. But I could not stay silent.
Once resolved to the necessity, I shouldered my journal like a flimsy shield and pressed through the busy byways of the east wing. I had scarce lifted my hand to knock on the mage’s door when it flew open. Dante yanked me inside by my belt.
“Gods, where have you been?” he said, before I could speak even one of my carefully rehearsed words. “I near fright the serving men out of their trousers every time they bring me a dinner tray. We need—” He grabbed the wrist of my bandaged hand. “Damn the vile creatures, are you burnt?”
With a grip kin to a mad dog’s jaws, he dragged me to the sunny end of his apartment, shoved me roughly onto the couch, and kicked a stool into place so he could sit close. Fortunately, he took better care as he laid my hand on his lap and unwrapped the bandages.
“Stop,” I said, pain scrambling my arguments. “There’s no need—”
“Never bind a burn so tight. And never slather a burn with ointments like this. Burns need air. Joints need movement. Can you uncurl your fingers?”
“Somewhat. It’s only—A
agh!” He had laid the back of my hand open to view, forcing my fingers out straight. The whole was swollen and seeping. Though smaller than warts, the fifteen or twenty angry wounds yet stung as if burning spikes had been driven through flesh and bone. My stomach heaved as had become its unfortunate habit. It was all I could do to hold back until he supplied a rag to catch the remnants of my breakfast.
Dante disposed of the foul mess, poured a slick, bitter potion down my throat, and took up exactly where he’d left off, wriggling each of my fingers in turn. “It’s well that it hurts. You understand that much?” My sweat-beaded face must not have reassured him. “If the burn is too deep, it destroys the underlying nature of flesh—the very senses that give you pain or pleasure. The physicians washed your wounds with natron, as I told them?”
My left hand massaged my head, which prickled as if tiny brooms were sweeping away the cobwebs of fever and sleeplessness. “Natron . . . yes. You told them?”
“People assume that every mage knows healing.” He jumped up and scrabbled through the paraphernalia on his worktable, returning with an amber flask and a wad of clean linen. “Unfortunately, the study of healing requires a patience I’ve only recently developed. At the time I had the chance to learn, I desired grander magic.”
He dampened a square of linen and dabbed at the raw wounds. I strove for mental discipline, hoping to prevent further humiliation. One would think the particles had burned straight through my gut to the roots of my toenails.
“I can scarce distinguish bone from muscle or liver from heart,” he said, “nor can I soothe so much as an itch out of mind, whether by conjury or practical wisdom.” He patted all dry, then bound a length of fresh bandage loosely about each finger before rewrapping my whole hand in the same fashion. “Burns, though”—he snugged the trailing end of the bandage, then grimaced at his own scarred appendage—“burns I know. Now tell me, did we not judge these villains rightly? So very clever they are. I’d never have understood what they were up to had you not laid the very revelation in my lap. Well done.” He jumped up and kicked the stool away in sheer exuberance.