by Sarah Remy
The two Kingsmen stationed outside Mal’s chambers thumped the butt of their pikes on stone in salute as Avani approached. They were members of Renault’s elite guard, meant to serve in the throne room. That the king had assigned them watch over his newest prisoner said much about his state of mind. With Brother Paul murdered and the role of Masterhealer not yet filled, and Brother Tillion preaching dissent in the castle bailey, Renault and the temple were in disharmony. The spy in Mal’s bed was a close-kept secret, which meant also that she had been saved from the dungeons but also denied the theists’ healing magics.
It was twilight in Mal’s chamber, heavy velvet curtains drawn over all but one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Embers glowed on the hearth. Fat beeswax candles burned in the multicolored lanterns Mal so loved, and in a bowl on his desk. The two Kingsmen tasked with keeping the spy from damaging her bandaged hands stood on either side of Mal’s mattress, almost hidden by swathes of the bed’s ostentatious canopy.
“No change, my lady. She’s uncomfortably warm, but not dangerously so. The fever abated for a time this morning and returned an hour ago. She’s not woken but the once to drink water. For the most part she’s laid still as a stone.”
“Ai, thank you.” The soldiers were plainly dressed, out of uniform. Both had been chosen for their competency in the sickroom and their attachment to the throne. Avani was not certain what connection they had to the king, but it was apparent from the affectionate way they spoke of Renault that they knew him personally and held him in the highest regard. Both had gray in their beards and a capable glint in their eyes.
Avani pulled the drapes back from the window, letting in light and air. She stoked the fire until flames crackled, cleaned her hands from fingertips to wrists with the wedge of lye soap Mal kept on his mantel near a broken penknife, a raven’s dark feather, and a mountain cat’s fractured jaw bone. Then she climbed the sleeping dais and examined her patient.
“She’s a wild specimen, ain’t she, my lady? All shank and sharp chin and knotted hair. When she dreams, it’s not the king’s lingua she’s speaking, either. Strong, too. Even with her ruined hands. You won’t want to be alone with her when she wakes, begging your pardon.”
“I’m not afraid.” Avani checked the spy’s right hand, and then her left. She’d soaked the ruined flesh in a solution of vinegar and honey before resetting what bone she could and strapping each splayed hand flat on a piece of wood borrowed from the palace cooper.
She hadn’t awoken to voice protest, not even when Avani introduced the maggots to her wounds and loosely wrapped each hand. Then, she’d been wracked with high fever. Avani pressed the back of her fingers against the unconscious woman’s cheek. She was warm, but not dangerously so. Like Harry on squatter’s row, the desert woman would do better in the end if her body managed to burn out infection.
The pulse in her neck beat steadily.
“She needs to keep drinking.” Satisfied that the dressings did not yet need changing, Avani checked the level of water in the bedside pitcher. “Mayhap soon some broth. Salt would do her good.” She wrinkled her nose. “And a bath. Will you send for hot water?”
The Kingsmen shared a dubious glance. “No servants, my lady. His Majesty’s orders. Not until she wakes and we’ve determined the extent of the temple’s treachery.”
“Well, she cannot lie here flaking dried blood and mud onto his lordship’s linens. Go and fetch broth and hot water from the kitchens, the both of you. Use the servant’s stairs. Be clever about it and none will be the wiser.”
“But, my lady—”
"Go!” Exasperated, Avani clapped her palms together. The Kingsmen paled as if she’d conjured lightning from the ceiling. “Make sure the water is steaming.”
The old soldiers moved with the alacrity of men used to obeying orders. When they were gone, Avani took a turn around Mal’s chambers, poking absently at his eccentric collection of bits and bobs—a chunk of red-striated gray stone near the wardrobe, a pouch of loose emeralds on the windowsill, a weathered iron cog no larger than her fist being used to weigh down miscellaneous papers near the inkpot on his desk.
She settled into the large leather chair he used as his own private throne, shed her slippers, and folded her legs beneath her. On the desk next to the odd iron cog and the stack of illustrations and the inkpot lay a thin book, upside down and open spine cracked. Avani winced for the badly treated binding. She turned the book over. She’d anticipated a treatise on war, weaponry, or dissection. Puzzled, she discovered instead a thumbed-over volume of poetry. A lovely etching of Selkirk’s rose device graced the front plate. Beneath the etching was a scrawled and brief dedication: For My Son Rowan.
The Kingsmen returned swiftly with wash water. Avani heard their footsteps in the hall, the quick pat-pat that came of balancing an awkward burden. They came with company, although she did not think they were aware of their companion. Mal’s footsteps made no sound, yet she knew he was there; his nearness made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in recognition.
She rose and opened the door, saving the Kingsmen the task.
“Near the bed, please,” she said, holding the door wide as the soldiers carried a steaming bucket and a covered tureen over the threshold. “And then you’re dismissed until suppertime. Wait outside the door if you like, but I’ll not have you hovering over the bath. Let’s spare her that indignity if we can.”
The Kingsmen swallowed protest and bowed their way back through the door. Avani knew they would take up position with their brother and sister in the hall, close at hand in case of trouble. She closed the door but for the sake of their pride left it unlocked.
“Ai, then, I take it you’ve fixed Renault’s handy little bauble to your satisfaction,” she said as she rolled up her sleeves in preparation for the task ahead.
It was like watching a ghostie materialize in front of the hearth, but Mal’s eyes were a wicked, diverting green and for all his small stature he was more solid than any wandering spirit. He unpinned the sapphire brooch and set it on his desk.
“Better than fixed.” He sighed and stretched; Avani could hear his back pop. “Improved upon. Take it with you when you go, if you like. Study it. When you’ve learned how the spell works, we’ll return it to Renault. It’s not the sort of knowledge we want lost.”
A sponge had come along with the bucket, the sort farmed near the Black Coast, collected by seal-sleek divers in baskets and later sold to royalty for more coin than Avani would earn in a lifetime. She cast a suspicious look door-ward, wondering if the Kingsmen had bypassed the kitchens and gone straight to Renault with her request.
“Of course they did,” Mal said. “Or did you think Cook keeps the broth in his kitchen warming in an embossed silver tureen?” He shed his dark vocent’s cape, tossing it over the back of his chair. Beneath he was clad in the Hennish leather tooled for his office. His curls, recently shorn, barely brushed his collar. The amber jewel on his finger shone subtly.
Avani saw the moment he realized she’d been sitting at his desk and braced for his displeasure. But he merely picked up the book of poetry, closed it, and set it aside without comment. Then he stepped onto the dais and bent over their patient.
“Still sleeping, I see. Good. The body and brain protect themselves. She’ll stay so for a time longer, I think.” Mal brushed his fingers, whisper-quick across the woman’s brow. “No longer burning up. Much improved, I suspect. I envy your healing magics; I doubt I’ll ever grasp the knack of it.”
“It comes of knowledge, not magic,” Avani corrected, ladling hot water into a shallow bowl, then adding the sponge.
“You don’t truly believe that.” Mal lifted one of the spy’s bandaged hands, sniffing. “She may indeed retain the use of her hands, if only minimally.” Straightening, he nodded Avani’s way. “Your little friends aid in fighting the infection, certainly, as do your potions and ointments. But it’s not only island recipes that saved my life in the forest almost a year ago, no
r again chased away impending brain fever upon my return from Roue. You’ve saved my life twice, and vanquished the Red Worm in between.” He took the bowl of water from Avani, freeing up her hands for the sponge. “I didn’t bring you to Renault’s attention for your skill with the mortar and pestle, but because you are quite literally overflowing with potential. Using bones to knit sorcery, or sorcery to knit bones. It’s the same principle.”
“Is it?” Avani dunked the sponge and wrung it out over the bowl. The water was hot enough to chap her hands. “What you do is called necromancy. Healing magic is the temple’s dominion. What I do is only by the Goddess’s will.”
“Only?” Mal’s fine black brows rose beneath his curls. His crooked nose gave him a rakish mien. Avani was hard-pressed not to smile. Mirth fizzed across their link, headier than the finest wine.
“Stop,” she chided quietly. Then, as she gently blotted the sleeping woman’s torso. “You’re in a fine mood. Much less sour than last we . . . spoke. What’s happened? Did you find Holder after all?”
“Nay.” He reined back overflowing amusement. “But I imagine we’ll tree him soon enough. Ah, now. Look at that. Interesting.”
The prisoner wore the same scant snakeskin vest and long kilted skirt the sidhe had found her in, short her sandals that Avani had removed before tending to her hands. Long feathers, crushed from capture and confinement, were sewn onto the sleeves of the woman’s vest and woven into her tangled hair. As Avani sponged away filth tattooed onto the woman’s arms and belly, revealing more feathers by way of individual azure pinpricks.
“Family narrative,” Mal said, taking the sponge from Avani and setting it and the basin aside. He leaned in for a closer look. “They’re a wandering people and take their history with them by way of self-decoration.” The woman sighed in her sleep, turning her head minutely on the pillow. Avani froze but the woman slept on. Mal tested the woman’s brow again for fever but shook his head, unconcerned. “Whoever she is, the design and number of the tattoos indicate rank and bloodline. According to Faolan, Everin believed she had some status. I’d have to agree.”
“You’ve spent time on the other side of the mountains.” It wasn’t a question.
His good mood ebbed. “The desert has always been Wilhaiim’s enemy. I’ve had occasion to do business on the other side of the divide, but not since before Andrew died, when I was quite young.”
Avani emptied the dirty water out the window, refilled the bowl, and returned to her task. She worked without speaking, trying with little success to imagine Mal as a young man—a king’s assassin, ridding Wilhaiim of a distant enemy by poison or blade or sorcery. A cruel errand, she thought, as much for the assassin as the victim.
“It wasn’t,” said Mal. He’d taken his knife from his belt and was meticulously separating a broken pinion from snakeskin. “I lived only to serve Renault, and Andrew. The ways and means may have been less visible, but it’s no different than sending any other lad or lass off to war. Liam will go this time around. In the infantry, I imagine. Best prepare for it.”
He took the rescued feather from the dais and placed it on his desk. Avani, intrigued, followed. In the colored lamplight the barbs shifted from white to orange and red. The shaft was bent in several places. Mal reached around Avani, plucked the raven feather from his mantel, and set it alongside for comparison. The raven’s was longer, although not by much. Avani frowned.
“Jacob’s found mischief,” she confessed. “At first I thought it was only his usual sport, but now I’m not so sure. He’s injured, and holed up in a tree near the barracks.” She set down the washing bowl. “He wants nothing to do with me, which is not like Jacob at all.”
“Jacob?” Attention caught, Mal inclined his body almost imperceptibly in Avani’s direction. Show me, he said, granting permission.
So she let him see blue sky past swathes of orange needles, the barrack’s tower top, the hollow boll in the tree trunk where Jacob had made his temporary nest. She let him feel the wrongness in Jacob’s shoulder, the dull, spiraling ache in his breast.
Something broken, or torn, she hazarded. Something I could fix, if he’d let me help. Not so different from finger bones, I think.
I wager our spy is an easier patient.
Mal experienced the bite of Jacob’s repudiation as Avani had. He retreated and then returned full force, snatching the recollection and turning it over between them, a puzzle to be solved. Mal wasn’t gentle. He had no experience in visions or the sharing of secret things. Avani had learned that dance by her Goddess’s grace, and Jacob’s interferences. It didn’t do to step without finesse into that space inside another’s skull. But Mal, dexterous when it came to spell craft or intrigue, boiled across their link without subtlety, overwhelming to the point of pain. He sorted through the record of Avani’s morning one experience after another, from breakfast alone at her table before sunrise, the dusty walk out of the city, Harry’s rotten foot and the tinker’s cheerful wave goodbye. Cleena and her threats, Thomas the footman with his empty, lust-bedazzled smile, Jacob, and then the Countess Wythe, the king’s favor sparkling on her breast while she called Liam less than human—
“Stop!” Avani cried aloud and in her head both, shoving at Mal with all her strength. He would consume her and she would let him because the ardor that was his complete absorption felt like worship.
Avani forced open eyes she didn’t remember closing. Mal was a hairsbreadth away, his lips brushing one corner of her mouth, his breath apples and heat on her tongue. She thought he’d kissed her as they tangled hearts and minds together. She knew he wanted to kiss her again. His heart was leaping in her ears, her arousal pooling in his gut.
Why not worship? demanded Mal, gently soothing reverence and adoration over the insult of his intrusion. There are none left like us, none so powerful or precious in all the world. Are we not worth worship?
She closed the scant distance between them. When he took her mouth a second time they tasted Mal and Avani in equal parts. It was headier than anything they’d ever experienced, as powerful as giving life, as addictive as taking it.
The door to Mal’s bedchamber crashed open. They might not have taken notice if not for the sudden influx of life force, a cloud of singular mortal stars behind closed eyelids, and then the crier’s ringing shout:
“His Majesty the King has arrived—make way!”
They broke apart, one being sundered again into two. Avani was left reeling. Mal, always more adept at hiding his feelings, straightened at once, the only evidence of his discomposure a slight stain of darker color on his cheeks.
“My liege.” Mal cleared his throat. “Apologies. I was not expecting—”
“In truth, neither was I,” replied Renault. He stood in the middle of the room, Brothers Orat and Tillion two steps behind, while Kingsmen and priests took up position along the walls, making a large space feel tight. The pinched look around Renault’s mouth might have been embarrassment.
Ignoring Orat’s glower and Tillion’s whispers, Renault plucked the circlet of his office from his head, handed it to a hovering attendant, and scrubbed gloved hands through his hair and beard, hiding his face as he did so. When he remerged he was calm again, no longer thrown by the sight of his two most trusted advisors caught midembrace.
“The new Masterhealer and I,” the king explained, indicating Brother Orat, “have sadly reached an impasse. I see only one way through it, other than throwing the entirety of his temple in my dungeons on suspicion of treason. And my dungeons are not so large as that. I need you to wake our spy, Mal, and I need you to wake her now.”
At Mal’s request, Avani busied herself with snuffing the lanterns and opening wide those windows she could reach. The fresh air was a welcome antidote to her heated skin. She lingered for a moment with her back to the room, watching the bailey below. If she pressed her hands on the sill and leaned out into daylight she could just glimpse treetops between the Royal Gardens and the barracks towers. Somewh
ere amongst the bristle of green a ruddy tree grew.
It was easier to think on finding Jacob than on the ache of Mal’s absence.
“No matter his faults—and there were many—I cannot believe Paul would treat with any enemy of the throne, and especially not with sand snakes.” Behind her the new Masterhealer came perilously close to shouting. Avani, without turning around, could tell the unforeseen responsibility of his new position lay uncomfortably on Orat’s shoulders.
“Our ancestors followed the one god west over the mountains to escape persecution, to build our temples and spread his word,” he continued. “Surely, Majesty, you have not forgotten your theist catechism.”
“I have not. Mayhap Brother Paul did.”
“He would not,” Orat reiterated. “He sought to restore the god’s good will to the throne in a time of trial. He wished to see you properly returned by marriage to the temple, not cast down from your seat. I tell you: I would know if it were otherwise.”
“You are not infallible.” Renault did not have to shout to make his point. “It is possible he affected treason under your nose. And now that you have contrived to take his place in power, my old friend, his mess is yours.”
“Wake her,” Tillion urged. “Make her tell the tale. If there is treachery under our roof, we must smoke it out.”
Avani hugged her ribs as she turned back into the room. Tillion, leaning on his staff, towered over everyone else. His hands and jaw trembled faintly but his yellow stare was stone—steady as he watched her from the other side of the chamber.
He knows, she thought, feeling all at once as if she would be violently sick.
“Avani,” said Mal sharply. “A hand, if you will? Torn from sleep without the body’s natural coping mechanisms to rely upon, she’ll be confused, frightened, and in pain. This is not a sympathetic magic.”
One foot in front of the other, she walked around Mal’s writing desk and approached the sleeping dais. Priest and Kingsmen alike fell back as she drew close. She wondered distantly if she looked as ravaged as she felt, or if they were merely reacting to long ingrained superstition. Renault gave her a hand up onto the platform, squeezing her elbow.