The Spirit Lens

by Carol Berg

  A door slammed. Measured footsteps echoed on the library stair. I dared not stop. Who knew when I might get another chance?

  My finger sped through the pages, pausing at any name remotely similar. And there it was.

  Eltevire: Seven-and-thirty residents. Nine men of arms-bearing age. A hundred eleven goats. Eight stone houses. A temple ruin and watchtower, ca 450 SE, both scavenged for building stones. Watering hole. Dry well. Thirteen knives. Two axes. Access by goat track and stone bridge, three kilometres due north of the shrine at Canfreg Spring.

  A goat track to access a watchtower—a highest view. I shoved the Arabascan volume into the stack and slammed the book cupboard shut. Then I snatched up the lamp and turned to go. Nidallo loomed in the archway opposite.

  “Your lists made no mention of Survey volumes,” he said, glaring at my hands, as if expecting evidence of theft. “They do not leave the library.”

  Emboldened by discovery and fueled by an unfocused anger, I had no trouble with this play. “I’ve taken no Survey volumes. Count them, if you wish. You are not privy to every matter my mentor and I discuss. Now, I’ve closed Mage Dante’s crates with tamper seals. If you could provide rope . . .”

  I oversaw the delivery of Dante’s crates to a local drayman and left Collegia Seravain without another word to anyone.

  Altevierre. Eltevire. I should have known to look to Arabasca first. Some two years before, I had retrieved a cache of books unearthed from the ruins of a once-fortified Arabascan town called Xarles. Before and during the Blood Wars, Xarles and that entire corner of Sabria’s eastern borderlands—crags and stony tablelands pocked with wildcat dens, hermits’ caves, and robbers’ lairs—had been the demesne of the Mondragoni necromancers.

  HAD IT NOT BEEN MIDDLE-NIGHT at the dark of the moon, I would have set out for Arabasca immediately; yet simple wisdom insisted that investigating Eltevire on my own would be a fool’s gambit. Despite my youthful dreams that had repeatedly anointed me the boldest of knights, I lacked the weapons to dispatch even a single despicable mage. Trained awareness of enchantments, paper knowledge, and a borrowed courret could scarce stand against magic bolstered by transference. And the manly art of righteous combat was as alien to me as the practices of sculpture or painting. The only “gentleman’s swordmaster” my father could afford had been a drunken tavern brawler. I needed Dante.

  A dreadful night in the local hostelry affirmed the sensible course. In the dark wakings between my own nightmares of glaring spectres and fleshless mules, and the mumbling, snoring, wind-ridden sleep of my companions in the bachelor’s loft, I resolved to save Lianelle ney Cazar. I would not force myself on the girl, but neither would I follow Michel’s example and abandon her. Ilario would know her family. Somehow, in his odd way, he could devise a scheme to remove the girl from Seravain. Once that was settled, I’d devise some ruse to roust Dante and ride for Eltevire.

  Even such resolution did not ease me into sleep. I spent the last hours of darkness huddled over a corner table in the inn’s common room. Meg, the yawning, drop-shouldered woman who kept the shabby establishment, brought me ale and cold steamed buns left from the previous day.

  “Yer back to Merona with first light, then,” she said as she spitted a slab of bacon over her newly stoked fire.

  “Aye. The great wicked city, all fish and sour wine, with evils round every corner.” My mirthless humor echoed the common local opinions.

  Meg bobbed her head, knowingly. “There was a lad from out near Oncet what went to Merona and near got hisself starved. . . .”

  Citizens of Tigano prided themselves on exchanging lurid tales. Living in the shadow of the collegia magica seemed to expand everyone’s imagination into the realms of the fantastic. This common room witnessed many a night of competitive tale-spinning. Yet made-up stories paled beside a plotted web that linked royal assassination and transference, Merona and Collegia Seravain, the living and the dead.

  Of a sudden, my sluggish curiosity woke. What had people seen roundabout Seravain and Tigano? One sure way to prompt more stories . . .

  “Your Oncet boy fared lucky even so,” I said, issuing my challenge as soon as the woman’s story wound to a bittersweet end. “Fellow in my lodging house at Merona was found murdered not long since. Ears, nose, and fingers cut off. Corpus dropped in an alley near the docks, emptied entire of his blood. The whore who lives upstairs says the man’s ghost lingers in the lane. Scared three customers away. Dreadful things like that don’t happen in Tigano.”

  Meg, dusted with flour and smelling of smoke, scooped up my emptied mug and refilled it from the tap. “Nah, boy. ’Tis not only in the city ghosts are walking. Every morn Bets the Seamer spies her gammy what was hanged a’dangling beside her washing line, and Dame Fanny herself says her dead sons creep about their old rooms in the manse. None dares go to our deadhouse save in best daylight. But it’s true, we’ve seen no grueish murders such as you’re telling of.”

  “Be thankful,” I said.

  When she issued no new attack in our lurid joust, I drained my cup and gathered my traveling case to go. Too much to hope that evidence lay about the countryside awaiting my eye. I’d had a moment’s thought that if Gaetana or someone else was practicing transference at the collegia, some evidence of a mule might have turned up here. They’d not dare use a second student.

  “But then . . .” The woman’s hand slowly turned her bacon. “I’ve not seen a man so staggered as Adept Coperno when Constable called him down from Seravain and he declared Grafer Wheelwright three times dead. Emptied half my tun afore he spake a word.”

  Meg blotted her sweaty brow with her sleeve, and she did not look up to make sure her tale had created the proper state of horrified amazement on my face. This tale frightened her, as well.

  I lowered myself to the stool. For a constable to call in aid from Seravain was not uncommon. For an adept to be frightened by a corpse was something else again. And for that adept to be a cocky former classmate who had left Seravain abruptly a few years previous mandated a hearing. “Three times dead? I never heard such.”

  Though her complexion took on the color of soured milk, she could not resist the telling. “Grafer got drunk and beat his wife. As was his common way, he run ’ta the wood to sleep it out. But a trimonth passed and he never come home.”

  She filled herself a mug and dragged a stool up to my table. “Then it happ’d one night a crate was left in my own yard to be shipped off to Merona. No one spake me, but only left the proper coin with it. Come daylight, the drayman and his helper, loading their wain, dropped the crate”—she leaned close until I smelled the ale and garlic on her breath—“and ’twas Grafer curled up inside—dead. Constable called the coroner. But the coroner couldn’t say what killed Grafer, as the lad had marks of strangling on his neck, and yet had green scum lodged in his throat as though he were breathing and fell into Breek’s Ditch.”

  She drank deep of her ale. “Adept Coperno come down from Seravain and worked his magic to seek which way Grafer died, so they could name the murderer. Three . . . four . . . five times over he worked it, till he puked all over the deadhouse floor, for he’d no magic left in his blood to fire his spellmaking. Once he drunk up my ale, all Coperno said was, ‘Three times dead. Strangled and died. Stabbed and died. Drowned at the last. And maybe more besides, but my seeing failed me.’ And then he stumbled out and’s ne’er again come down the hill.”

  A story to make anyone blanch. A story that teased and nagged and roused a certainty that this was no exaggeration, but very much a part of the exact same story I lived. “That’s a cruel, wicked tale, mistress. This happened when? Six . . . seven . . . years ago?”

  “ ’Twas exactly three years past, come midsummer, as it happened when my daughter was confined with her youngest, and we had a charm-singer in to ward her house from—” The innkeeper flushed and jumped up, as if she’d just recalled that I, too, was a follower of the Camarilla, who lashed or fined such unsanctioned practit
ioners as charm-singers. “Best get to my baking. Everyone will be up soon.”

  She stuck out her hand for payment. I rummaged in my belt purse, and the first coin I pulled out was the double-strike silver—Gruchin’s luck charm. I’d never returned it to Dante. No reason not to spend it; silver was silver. But I slid the coin into my boot, then pulled out twenty copper kivrae and tossed them on the table.

  “One more thing, Mistress Meg,” I said, snagging her apron as she scooped up the coins. “Did the constable send after the one who was to receive the crate? Surely that person would have knowledge of the crime. I’d like to think such mystery simply explained—and well punished.”

  She downed her ale and shook color back into her sagging cheeks. “Constable thought same as you, but my lads had already broke up the crate and thrown it in their morning fire, and none recalled what was writ. Some say Grafer haunts Breek’s Ditch. I’ve not seen him, but I don’t go down there no more. ’Tis a wicked age we live in. Temples deserted. Disbelievers growing bold. Folk forget their ancestors and make demonish devices that steal the stars from the heavens, and prison time itself in jewel cases. My mam said the dead rise to give us warning of evil times, and so I believe.” She jerked her apron from my hand.

  I rousted the stable lad, preferring to lead my mount until the light grew than to remain in Tigano one more moment. As I trudged along the rutted road, I could not shake the notion that Adept Coperno had met a fate no fairer than Grafer Wheelwright. Had the frightened adept gone back to Seravain and asked one question too many? For I would swear on my hope of Heaven that he had left the collegia exactly three years ago at midsummer without a word to anyone.

  The rare physician could retrieve a life whose spark had dimmed past common detection. But only a sorcerer of uncommon power—only three I’d read of—had ever reclaimed a dying person from the very folds of the Veil. Only a sorcerer exploring the unholy might see use in repeatedly driving a man to that brink and snatching him back again.

  The light grew, tinting the scant clouds with vermillion and rose. Old Meg’s story had raised such dread in me that I felt near drowning in it. I retrieved a flask from a saddlebag and drew down a long pull of ale, then pressed my face against my horse’s flank. And in that moment of warm, living darkness, memory raised an image of freshly splintered wood . . . not Grafer Wheelwright’s crate, broken and thrown in a fire, but long strips scattered in Ophelie’s cell in the royal crypt. Great Heaven, had someone transported her to Castelle Escalon in a crate? And Michel—

  My heart near stopped its beating. I had seen such a crate as could hold a tightly bound man, not two days after Ophelie de Marangel had escaped her prison. A crate exuding the stink of “mushrooms growing in dirt and dung” had sat in Castelle Escalon’s steward’s office. Had it held a dead man or . . . the god save us all . . . a living one?

  I threw myself on my horse and pushed the poor beast unmercifully all the way to Merona.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  23 QAT 38 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

  The morning air hung heavy and damp in the bustling passages and courtyards of Castelle Escalon. I ducked my head as I forged through the ever-moving river of courtiers and servants. The sense would not leave me that anyone I noticed would turn up dead.

  I had arrived the previous evening after two long days on the road, only to find the tally of the fallen grown to yet more dire proportions. Waiting in my apartments was a message from a devastated Ilario. Mage Orviene’s adept Fedrigo, Ilario’s favored maker of crocodile charms and stomach elixirs, was reported knifed in a tavern brawl near the docks and thrown dead into the river. And beside Ilario’s scented paper lay a letter scribed in my own hand, still sealed, returned along with a message informing me that the Marqués and Marquesa de Marangel and their two young sons had met an unfortunate fate. An explosion of devil’s firework had devoured Ophelie’s home and family not a tenday past. Someone felt us on the trail of discovery. Every hour since learning this news had been filled with a creeping dread, the first tremors of an earthshaking that set birds and beasts to flight.

  My morning’s first task was to settle the matter that had gnawed at my vitals all the way from Seravain. Henri de Sain, third secretary to the palace steward, was my quarry of the moment. Assuming he lived.

  Henri was sweeping his private office, which was not at all private and very unlike an office, being little more than a closet off the stone-floored, north-wing undercroft. Casks, trunks, and teetering stacks of crates shared the vast undercroft with a legion of undersecretaries, paymasters, footmen, draymen, and ladies’ maids.

  “Divine grace, Henri,” I said, as if our two brief encounters had made us personal friends, “I just wanted to thank you again for the recommendation of your tailor. As soon as I’ve pay in hand, I’m determined to give him fair custom.”

  “Oh, very good,” he said, looking a bit surprised as I occupied his stool, drawing up my knees and wrapping my arms round as if set to stay awhile. He set his broom in the corner and brushed off his sleeves. “Is there something I can do for you, Sonjeur de”—his eyes darted to my exposed left hand—“Savin-Duplais, is it? Portier?”

  I bobbed my head. “Honestly, you’re the only person in the palace who’s been civil, so I didn’t think you’d mind another inquiry. I’ve just returned from Collegia Seravain whence I shipped three book crates back here for this wolfhound of a mage, Dante.” I screwed up my face in disgust. “The taverner told me a dreadful story about a crate that had been dropped in her yard, only to find a dead man in it. A corpus . . . to be shipped here to Castelle Escalon, she said! And not respectfully in a decent coffin as a family might do, with a verger’s blessings and proper pall over all, but curled up tight in a nailed-up box as one would never suspect. Have you ever heard of such wickedness?”

  “Nay.” His nostrils flared in distaste. “Such a violation would be—”

  “Exactly so. But you see”—I dropped my voice, drawing him nearer with every word—“I recalled that stinking crate you had in here not a tenday ago, just before the fire on the Swan, and it gives me the frights to think it might have been a corpse, as well. And I’m wondering—This Dante has already laid threats on me, you see. I’m bound by my duties to deal with him, but if he’s the one shipping corpses about the kingdom or having them sent, I’m thinking to resign my post and hie me back to academe.”

  Henri’s knotted brow softened. “You needn’t fear, good Portier. He’s neither sent nor received any parcel whatsoever. That particular nasty crate—living mushrooms as I recall, destined for an apothecary in Mattefriese—originated with the least likely person to be engaged in abominations of any kind, Damoselle ney Billard herself.”

  The sunlight pouring into the dusty hall dimmed to gray. I heard myself laughing and prating about foolish anxieties and country superstitions. But all the time Maura’s own words crowded my memory. “Some matters we cannot alter. Some promises we cannot undo.” Eugenie herself had stitched only the new DESTINNE ensign on the celebration banners. Who but Maura would have seen to the ordering of linen and hiring of seamstresses and the delivery of the finished rolls? Maura, the queen’s trusted household administrator, who had been unstrung since the fire on the Swan. And Mattefriese lay on the Louvel-Arabascan border, the last town of any size between Merona and Eltevire. Blessed angels . . .

  My spirit recoiled. Rebelled. Yet, as if I had split into two persons at once, Portier, agente confide, nattered with Henri about his busy life in the palace, and all the crates and bundles that came through the palace, exclaiming how easy it must be to get them confused.

  “As do you, I keep a journal,” he said. “Everyone says I can recall names and dates and sizes as some recall their children’s birth stars and lineage.” Flushed, he waved off my feigned amazement. “I’ll send notice when your boxes arrive. Then you’ll be finished with this fearsome Dante. A footman I know saw the mage set fire to his food with his eyes. He was at table with the queen’s
ladies and claimed the meat was off. And the maid who washes his linen swears he can see through walls, as he forever opens the door before she knocks! Could that be true?”

  “I’d put no outlandish talent past him,” I said, truthfully. “But I’d best hush. What if he finds out I’ve spoken ill of him?”

  Henri blanched.

  “One more small thing,” I said. “You’ve surely heard about this event Lord Ilario plans for Prince Desmond’s deathday? I’ll need banners to be made. . . .”

  Numb already, I was scarce surprised to hear that the palace seamstress who had sewn the banners for the Swan had slit her wrists, horrified that her faithful work had been used to endanger her king.

  The third secretary would make a fine, credible witness, said I, the king’s chosen agente, a lunatic who had dared imagine that out of this snarl of ghosts and murders something new and good might take root in his own sorry life. I made it as far as the wide steps of whorled marble that led into the queen’s wing of the palace before I dived into a small fragrance garden to be sick.

  The heaving seemed to purge my head as well as my stomach. Maura could not be involved in these crimes. I did not question my growing certainty that Henri’s crate had held a living prisoner, but any of two hundred people could have attached Maura’s name to it. She did favors for everyone in the queen’s household. And surely fifty other people had been involved with the delivery of the banners to the Swan. Unlike her mistress, Maura had boarded the ship.

  Questioned outright, she could surely provide an explanation for everything . . . only I could not ask. Secrecy must be maintained. Exoneration was not my prerogative. My charge was to gather evidence, make linkages, investigate, deduce.

  I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and plucked mint leaves from a spreading plant. Chewing the pungent leaves, I headed for the east wing and Ilario’s apartments, speeding through the curved window gallery that displayed the ruddy rooftops of Merona. I would task Ilario with saving Lianelle ney Cazar, and then persuade Dante to come with me to Eltevire. Unmask the true conspiracy, find the murderers, and all would be clear.