The Lascar’s Dagger

by Glenda Larke

  “What could she do anyway if she found out something was wrong?” Mathilda asked, her voice muffled by the bedclothes. “Dose me with more of that horrible tonic water the Regal’s physicians are always delivering to my door?”

  “It is time she checked to see if your pregnancy is proceeding well,” Sorrel said firmly, and yanked the covers away. “Lie on your back, milady, and let Aureen do her job.”

  The Princess glared at her, but she folded her arms and glared back. I wish I knew what was bothering her. Perhaps it was no more than the normal fear of a first-time mother, knowing she had to give birth without the benefit of familiar physicians or any of her female relatives. Her own mother had died of infection after giving birth to a stillborn child.

  She has every right to feel lonely and frightened. Yet Sorrel couldn’t help suspecting there was more to it than that. Her stomach knotted. Perhaps the Princess was worried Aureen would realise her pregnancy could be further along than it was supposed to be…

  Mathilda sighed, capitulated and turned over on to her back, saying, “Very well. I may as well get it over and done with, to silence you fidget-fussers.”

  Aureen stepped forward to arrange the Princess’s nightgown and the bedcovers so that only the bulge of the pregnancy was exposed to the air. Her movements were precise and practised, but Mathilda continued to sulk. “Your hands are freezing,” she complained. “There, did you feel that? Your cold fingers made the baby kick!”

  Aureen continued her examination, then asked, “With milady’s permission, I’d like to listen to the heartbeat of the baby.”

  Mathilda, startled, asked, “How can you do that?”

  “I’ll put my ear to your skin. With your permission?” she asked politely, but before Mathilda could protest, her ear was already resting against the Princess’s abdomen.

  Mathilda glowered in outrage, her hands digging into the covers. The longer Sorrel spent in the company of royalty, the more she was glad she’d been born an ordinary woman; what point was there in being a princess if your life was governed by what was proper for your elevated status, even if it was detrimental to your health?

  When Aureen straightened up, there was a look of helpless panic on her face.

  “What is it?” Mathilda cried, catching sight of her expression. “What’s wrong?”

  Aureen stuttered, “N-n-naught exactly, milady. Your grace. ’Cept them’s two babies. Two heads, two heartbeats. Them’s twins.”

  Mathilda sat bolt upright on the bed, clutching the bedclothes to her, staring from one to the other of them. “Twins? Are you sure?”

  “Ay, surely. I’ve helped deliver twins before.” She looked across at Sorrel. “Said she was too big.”

  There was a long silence while Mathilda knitted her brow and considered the news. “Well, isn’t that good?” she asked tentatively at last. “I mean, there’ll be two chances of having an heir to the throne.”

  “Please leave us, Aureen,” Sorrel said quietly. “The Regala and I need to be alone for a while. When her ladies arrive, tell them her grace will not be appearing today. She’ll rest in her chamber as she slept badly last night. Ask the chambermaid to see that breakfast is brought up for both of us.”

  Aureen, looking relieved, bobbed a curtsey and left, closing the door behind her.

  Mathilda swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Help me get dressed, Sorrel. And then have the goodness to explain to me just what is serious enough to have you give orders to my maid in front of me as if I do not exist.” Her tone was as cold as the air.

  In that moment, Sorrel could not help but be impressed with Mathilda. Her eyes might have been wild with fright, but she kept any tremor out of her voice as she gave orders about what she was going to wear. Only when Sorrel was tying the final laces on her kirtle did Mathilda say, “Now tell me why you think having twins is a bad thing – while you dress my hair. Which is your job today, seeing as you’ve sent Aureen away.” She sat down in front of her looking-glass and waited, her face stony.

  Sorrel picked up the hairbrush and began to tackle the tangles. “This is something that Aureen and I have wondered about for some time,” she admitted. “Aureen felt you were larger then you should be, right from the beginning. She suspected twins, though we wanted to make sure before we told you. But you refused to let her examine you. If you were back in Ardrone, twins would doubtless be something to celebrate. Especially as Aureen knows that both of them are alive and well.”

  “So? Why did she look as if she’d seen a headless ghost? And why do you look so constipated?”

  “Things are different here in Lowmeer. They don’t like twins.”

  Mathilda met her gaze in the mirror. Her hands moved as if to smooth down her kirtle, but her fingers were trembling. Her eyes flashed warning. “You obviously know more than I do. I suggest you tell me whatever it is that has the two of you looking like you’re walking to the executioner’s block.”

  32

  The Devil-Kin Dilemma

  I’ve had a bellyful of grey days and rain, Saker thought. Grey skies, grey seas, grey clouds, miserable grey swamps and bogs. Was it any wonder that Lowmians were so dour?

  Even now, as he stood looking out over the city from the library window of the Seminary of Advanced Studies, he could barely see the houses on the opposite side of the street. The fog had rolled up the Ust estuary at three o’clock in the afternoon and he doubted it would lift till morning.

  He leaned his forehead against the cold of the window glass and thought again of Dortgren village. His memory retained its aura of a surreal dream, but the reality of its legacy was far sharper in his mind. The leader of those men had recognised him. Someone, he thought, from his university days. Maybe he’d decided to kill Saker because he realised that he must be a spy of some kind. Perhaps he’d just been afraid – needlessly – that Saker would remember him. Not a fellow student; the man had been too old for that.

  And the birds?

  I called them. Oh, not deliberately. But in his panic, he’d begged for help. He’d called not on Va, but to his Shenat roots. And with his witchery, the birds had come…

  Va’s teeth, I made a killing weapon out of a flock of birds. They stabbed and clawed men to death.

  A pigeon landed on the sill. It cocked its head to stare at him with one round dark eye, then pecked at the glass, fluttering as if it wanted to enter.

  “Go away,” he snapped sourly.

  “Chatting to birds now, Witan Zander?”

  He shook his head ruefully as he turned to face the newcomer. His gloomy mood lifted a little just to see her. When he’d first appeared at the seminary on the outskirts of Ustgrind seven months earlier, with the Pontifect’s letter in his hand, Prelate Loach had assigned Witan Shanny Ide to assist him. A short, middle-aged woman, as broad as she was tall, she had a smile that made every recipient feel special. The Pontifect had been right about the naming conventions: shanny and ide and loach were all the names of fish, and they had chosen to disguise his Ardronese origins by calling him Zander Tench – both freshwater fish.

  “Witan Shanny, it’s good to see you again.”

  “Prelate Loach told me you were back, so here I am.” She waved her hand at the pile of papers on the table of the library. “I see you didn’t waste a moment getting back into your studies. What did you find out on this latest trip?”

  “That I hate the Horned Death more than ever. Va rot it, it’s a horrible way to die.”

  “The fishing village near Utmeer?”

  He nodded. “Dortgren. Three already dead before I arrived. Too many more followed them to the grave.” He swallowed at the memory. The children, dear Va, why …? “The sick all die. And all I could do was watch.” In a fit of exasperated impotence, he slapped his palm down on the table. “Not anyone’s prayer nor a witchery healer’s skills makes one whit of difference.”

  She clicked her tongue in sympathy as she stooped to pick up a sheet of paper that had drifted to the floor
.

  Sighing, he took it from her. “Sorry.” He unrolled one of the charts on the table, anchoring it with his dagger and his purse to stop it rolling up again. He pointed at one of the lake areas. “The last place I visited was this village. Barge folk, bordering a mere at the centre of the south-western barge network. Twenty-three people died there six months ago, all barge-owners and their bargees, men, women, children. In the month prior to the outbreak, one or another of the dead had been to every corner of that network. And yet no one else contracted the disease outside the village. There hasn’t been a single case of Horned Death on any of those barge routes. So how is the disease carried? It’s the same for almost all outbreaks. It’s confined to a small area, usually people who are related or neighbours.”

  “You didn’t find anything in common?”

  “Apart from the fact that everyone who had it died? No. Except…”

  She looked at him in hope, as though she thought he was capable of producing a miracle.

  “The usual silly talk about devil-kin. When I ask about twins, though, nobody has anything tangible to say. Most are adamant that none of the affected families have twins. And yet still they believe it.” He sighed. “I’ve scoured the country looking for some commonality, something that will explain these outbreaks, some reason that they never seem to spread very far, some reason that each outbreak comes to an end quite quickly.

  “Here, look at the map.” He tapped the chart with a finger. “I’ve marked every one of the twenty-four outbreaks for the past five years. Can you see anything any of these places could have in common? Because I can’t. Villages and towns, coastal and inland, settlements in the marshes, and on the northern downs, and the high country on the northern border. Farmers, fishermen, noblemen, bargees, shopkeepers, peat-cutters, miners. Men, women, children, wealthy, poor, sinners and saints, drunks and clerics. Shrine-keepers here in Lowmeer seem to be immune as yet – while shrine-keepers were the ones most affected in Ardrone’s lone outbreak.”

  She bent over the chart, looking at his latest additions. He watched as her eyes widened and her pink cheeks faded to ashen. She gave him a stricken look and then sat down heavily in the nearest chair. She opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind. He was silent, sick to the stomach, both desiring and dreading answers.

  Her plump cheeks working with suppressed emotion, she said, “Forgive me, witan. I think I need to talk to the Prelate about this first.”

  “You’ve seen a pattern,” he said flatly.

  “Not – not exactly. But those towns and villages … Oh, Va. They are all familiar to me.” She levered herself up clumsily. “I’ll talk to Prelate Loach.” She left without another word.

  Half an hour later, the Prelate arrived in the library flustered and frowning, Witan Shanny puffing behind, trembling like an oak leaf in a breeze. Loach was elderly, and thin with the scrawny fragility of the aged. He carried a ledger with him under one arm and slapped it down in front of Saker, saying, “In her letter, the Pontifect said I was to trust you, which is why I’m going to let you see this. Take a look while I consider this chart of yours.”

  Saker took the ledger, placed it on the other end of the table and began to turn the pages. There was no title, no indication of the significance of what it contained. Each page was divided into columns. The left-hand one was a list of dates: the first entry now fifty years in the past; the last entry was only several weeks ago. The other columns were names, of people and of towns.

  Raising his gaze to stare at Prelate Loach, he found the man had already straightened up to look at him. “What is this list?” Saker asked quietly.

  Instead of answering, Loach said, “The Basalt Throne and the Throne’s assassins, known as the Dire Sweepers, have been killing twins in Lowmeer for generations. And why? Because they believe that one in every pair of twins is a servant of A’Va.”

  “As a witan with faith in Va’s power, I cannot think there is any truth in such a notion.”

  “Which is why many of us Lowmian clerics have been trying to rescue twins for fifty years, by secretly spiriting away one – or even both – of the babies at birth and giving them to another family to raise.”

  “We missed many,” Shanny whispered. “But our emphasis on secrecy has kept us safe. We find out about twin births by working closely with selected midwives. Of course, there have been rumours…”

  Loach nodded. “The list in the ledger contains the names of towns and villages either where twins were born, or where one was placed with a local family. The birth family and the recipient family are all listed. The dates are the birth dates of the twins. In other words, Mynster Rampion, what you are looking at are all places connected in some way to twins not drowned at birth.” He pointed to Saker’s charts. “Every single town you’ve marked as having had an outbreak of the Horned Death is in that ledger.”

  Utterly appalled, Saker didn’t know what to say. Pustules ’n’ pox, for a moment he didn’t even know what to think.

  “Of course,” Loach muttered, “there are many villages mentioned in the ledger that have had no pestilence.” A breathless pause later, he added, “Yet. I am sure you realise that if these lists were leaked, everyone involved, be they twins or midwives or families, would die at the hands of the Dire Sweepers.”

  Saker nodded, but it was another implication that churned his thoughts into a whirlpool of horror. Dear Va, Lowmian clerics have been rescuing twins believing in their innocence, and all along …?

  No, he couldn’t think that. It couldn’t be true.

  No one spoke.

  Devil-kin were real?

  No, please not that. It was a savage superstition. An excuse for the murder of babies. A stinking, miserable lie that had brought untold misery to people for generations.

  “We thought we were doing the right thing,” the Prelate said in strangled tones. “We thought we were saving babies.”

  “We were,” Shanny said. “We were. Only one in every set is…” Her voice trailed away.

  Saker heard the words she didn’t say: … is a devil-kin. And one is innocent. Which would account for the villages that had no Horned Death; they’d been blessed with innocent children.

  No, please don’t make this true. Don’t make it true that to save an innocent baby, you must let a devil-kin free into the world.

  “And in so doing, we killed how many other blameless people by loosing the Horned Death in their midst?” Loach asked, echoing his thought. “Shanny, we promised those good, pious folk that they were taking in an innocent babe. But it seems half the time we were giving them a child that would grow up to murder them horribly with a disease! We were planting a devil-kin in their households. We were giving A’Va a way to attack them in their own homes.” He looked at Saker. “You wanted to know how this pestilence is spread? Well, now you know. The devil-kin are responsible.”

  Shanny clapped her hands over her mouth, as if that was the only way she could stop herself from screaming at the horror of their mistake. Prelate Loach looked at the ledger. “We need to compare the details in that” – he pointed at the book – “with your information.”

  Saker nodded, knowing what he was asking. They had to compare the names in the ledger with his own list of the dead. They had to find out how many of the twins were still alive. They had to find out just how ghastly the whole mess was. They had to be sure…

  He had no idea how it would be possible to repair the damage. Or how the clerics could cope with the guilt.

  The tears were already streaming down Shanny’s cheeks. “Dear Va,” she asked, “what have we done?”

  No, Saker thought. That’s not the question to ask. The question is, how do we stop A’Va? Or maybe: how do we find out why this happened?

  Ardrone had no problem with twins. Nor had any of the Principalities. Why, then, did Lowmeer?

  Bleary-eyed, Saker met Loach’s grim gaze. They’d exchanged all the information they had.

  Yet all any of them had n
ow was more questions.

  It’s like walking in wet farmyard muck. You think your footing is secure, but it never is. You can fall any moment, and end up in the filth, without being sure how you got there.

  They still sat around the library table, in the gloom now, for the single lighted candle and the coals in the fireplace did little to dispel the bleak dark of a foggy night.

  “It’s not just a Lowmian problem any more,” Loach said. “After all, Ardrone has the Horned Plague too now.”

  Rage gripped him just thinking about that. “Pox on’t, Loach, I want to know how a baby can become evil, without choice. This is a travesty of Va-Faith! If a person has no choice from birth about the nature of the path they choose through life, and the sort of afterlife they will have, what kind of world is it?”

  To Saker’s distress, Loach started weeping. To give the Prelate a chance to compose himself, he turned back to the ledger, studying the figures. Dortgren village was mentioned as having a childless couple named Juyrons who’d taken in a male baby thirteen years earlier. Saker winced, remembering. Hannels. He’d been angry, shouting that he wasn’t supposed to die. He’d cursed Va…

  A devil-kin.

  He slumped in his chair.

  He’d returned to the village after the Dire Sweepers had sailed away. Hannels’ body was in the ruins of the burned house, with his mother’s. One of the other villagers had remarked that the boy had recently become a problem to his parents, refusing to help his father, refusing to enter the local Oak shrine, fighting with other village lads.

  But if the lad was a devil-kin, why did he contract the Horned Death? Saker had seen the horns … He’d suffered just as much as everyone else.

  “The programme to save twins ends as of now,” Loach said suddenly, stonily grim. “I will contact all the midwives and clerics and shrine-keepers involved, and tell them it is our duty to report to the Throne the birth of all twins. If midwives do not drown twins at birth, the law will do it for them.”