He had backbone—I’ll give him that. Instead of being cowed, his eyes blazed their defiance as if they were lit from within, but he had brains as well. He knew I could do exactly what I said. The coins clinked softly as they came to rest in his palm. “What do you need to know?”
“An old man died last night in the lower merchants’ section just across the poor quarter bridge. I want the tale from any eyes the urchins had in the area.
“And, Rory,” I said as he turned to leave, “I’m pretty sure I know what happened, so don’t try to have one of the lads make up something. If I want to buy tales I’ll pay for them at Braben’s tavern.”
His mouth tightened and he gave me a stiff nod, as if his neck didn’t want to bend. “Wait here.”
He came back a few minutes later with a dark-haired boy of ten at his side. The lad never looked at me but cast furtive glances by turns behind him and over each of my shoulders, as if he expected trouble any moment. Judging by the dark cast to his skin and eyes, he had at least one parent from the southern reaches of the continent.
“This is Beda,” Rory said. “He can’t steal, so he begs for us. Sometimes he forgets to come back. Ilroy didn’t fetch him home last night.” He turned and bent so that his face was on a level with the boy’s and cupped his face in both hands, forcing eye contact. “Beda, this man wants to know what you saw last night. He’s safe.” Rory’s tone was gentle and his moves slow and deliberate, but the boy flinched anyway.
Beda nodded and his eyes flicked once to mine before the glance hurried away, his chin following them as he tried to look everywhere but at me.
“It’s all right, Beda,” Rory said in the same tone of voice I’d heard horse trainers use on skittish colts. “He’s safe.”
Beda shook his head. “Tall.”
I understood and dropped to my haunches on the dusty street. The boy’s glance found mine for a bit longer this time, and he nodded.
“They dropped him, dropped him, and his arms and legs bounced like turnips,” Beda said. He rocked back and forth, and his speech came out in rhythm to his motion.
“What did he look like, the man they dropped?” I asked.
“Old and used, like he was too small for his skin,” Beda said. “His hair stuck out all around.”
I nodded my confirmation with relief—that was him. “What about the men that dropped him, Beda?”
His mouth stretched and his eyes grew wide, until the whites showed around. Little mewing sounds came out in time to the rocking motion. Rory’s hand found my shoulder. “That usually means someone reminds him of his father.”
I wanted nothing more at that moment than to put my fist in that unknown man’s face, but it was also information I could use. “What did he—”
Rory’s hand dropped onto my shoulder quickly enough to surprise me. “Don’t ask directly. He’ll close down altogether. I’ve worked with him enough over the last few months to get you what you need to know.”
“Where did they go, Beda, the men who dropped off the old man?” I asked.
His face relaxed from the horrified rictus he’d worn, and his rocking slowed. “North. They walked into the darkness until it swallowed them.”
“What about their clothes, Beda?”
He almost smiled, and I caught a glimpse of the boy he might have been if his life hadn’t been twisted from its path. “Rich men trying to look ordinary,” Beda said. “Ragged cloaks, expensive boots.”
I caught Rory’s eye and chose my words to keep from setting Beda off again. “I need specifics, Rory—skin and hair color, scars, tattoos, whatever you can get.”
His mouth tightened. “Expensive information.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about money. I looked at poor broken Beda and nodded. “Get it as gently as you can.”
Rory knelt, shaking his head, angry, but his voice stayed calm and soothing. “I saw a man once with darkened skin, like the wood from a night oak tree. The men last night?”
Beda’s eyes widened a fraction, but his rocking stayed smooth and steady.
Rory gave me a small shake. The men weren’t from Aille in the south or from the southern continent. “I saw another man with skin like lamplight or olive oil. The men last night?”
Nothing changed in Beda’s posture, and disappointment settled in my gut. Whoever had dumped the old man on the street looked like anyone else on the streets of Bunard.
“I saw a man,” Rory said, “with a scar on his face.”
Beda’s mouth dropped open and his rocking increased.
“Is that enough?” Rory asked. “I’m about to lose him.”
I shook my head. “Narrow it down. Half the veterans from the last war are walking around with scars on their faces. Vertical, horizontal, left, right, forehead, cheek, chin.”
Rory pulled a deep breath and looked on the verge of refusing, but he put his hands on little Beda’s shoulders and spoke more softly still. “I once saw a man with a scar on the left side of his face . . .” No change. “ . . . on the right side of his face . . .” Still no change. “ . . . on his forehead.”
Beda’s rocking increased, and his fingers fluttered at his side, like the wings of a bird trying to fly away. Rory caught them and held them with as much care and tenderness as any human had ever shown another. “I saw a man with a horizontal scar on his forehead,” Rory said.
Beda’s rocking didn’t increase but his eyebrows drew together a fraction. “He doesn’t understand the word,” I said.
Rory nodded. “I saw a man with a scar on his forehead like another eyebrow.”
Beda’s face crumpled and little mewing sounds came from him.
I stood as if I carried Beda’s affliction like a weight across my shoulders and put my hand on Rory’s arm. “That’s enough. I don’t think they can hide from me now.”
Rory gathered Beda into a hug, as if he could protect that broken little boy from me and my questions. He lifted his head and called back into the alley. “Pogue!”
The girl came and lifted Beda in a hug, carrying him away.
Rory turned a gaze on me of alloyed disgust, anger, and shame, as if I’d forced him into some act of degradation. I deserved every bit of it. “How long will he be like that?”
“Until he sleeps, but that may be two or three days. Every time he remembers his father it gets a little bit worse.”
I dug into my purse and pulled out another silver penny. “Go to the apothecary in the lower merchants’ section on Hile Street. Tell him I sent you for two drams of absinthe. He’s honest with his potions. It’ll let Beda rest.”
“You think this squares us, yah?” Rory asked in his sarcastic accent.
I didn’t bother to look angry, defensive, or anything else. “Friend, I’ll never make that much money.” I walked away before he could respond.
Chapter 4
Picking pockets would earn a man a striping. Robbing a man’s home would get you thrown in prison or, in the case of repeat offenders, enough lashes to put you in danger of your life. Laidir wouldn’t let the reeves take off a hand anymore. The kingdom needed every able-bodied man for war, if and when it came. A charge of murder would get a man thrown in prison until evidence could be gathered for a trial. Then, if found guilty, he would be scheduled for execution.
But gift stealing, if proven, would result in summary execution. Right then. Right there. And every man and woman in any kingdom on the northern continent was expected to carry it out. In the eyes of the church there was no greater crime than forcing a man or woman to surrender the gift their family had received from Aer to someone else. According to the four orders that embodied the faith, you weren’t just stealing from a man or woman—you were robbing them and all their descendants through the centuries of the gift they were to use to glorify Aer, serve the kingdom, and earn a living.
Most of the pure gifted had risen to become nobility over the long centuries, while the partially gifted had become merchants and artisans in service to their respect
ive king or queen, who in turn held the most important and rarest gift of all: the gift of kings.
I crossed into the lower merchants’ section of the city, trying not to think of centuries filled with bloodshed as powerful men and women fought for the gift that would proclaim them ruler, the encompassing gift Aer had given to a select few, supposedly to allow them to reign with wisdom and compassion.
What reason would any noble have to steal a gift—or charisms, as the priests called them—when they already owned a gift and all the wealth that went with it? And why one as inconsequential as the physical gift of beauty? Of all the possible intersections between Aer’s gift and a man’s talent, music was commonly deemed one of the least profitable, no matter how pleasurable it might be to the ear.
The sweet smell of honeyed meats pulled me to a stall on Market Street where I bought lunch and dates covered with crushed almonds. I ate the mutton on the way and slipped the leaf-wrapped sweets into my cloak.
The sun stood at noon when I entered the shadow of the Merum cathedral. The oldest of the four orders, it boasted the most extensive library and the most peculiar librarian. An acolyte in white escorted me through the halls that centuries of construction had contrived to join together into a maze, and I let the familiar regret of my lost profession wash over me.
The librarian would be back among the shelves, sorting and reading, his hands deft among the sheets of parchment, books, and scrolls. I diverted to a bookcase I picked at random, pulled a dusty volume from the crowd, and opened it to a page near the middle. I marked it with my thumb and hid it behind my back.
Custos, the librarian, and I had a custom dating back years to when I’d been an acolyte in these halls.
I found him by the shelves of theology, the largest section of all.
“Hello, my boy. You haven’t visited in a while.” His eyes, sharp like a bird’s, peered at me with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and challenge.
“I need help, old friend.”
He drew himself up in mock affront. “You know my price.”
I laughed. I did indeed. Reaching into my cloak I withdrew the fistful of dates, but when he reached for them, I held them out of reach. I was of average height, but Custos stood a hand shorter than me.
“You dare?” His eyebrows quivered in a pantomime of anger.
I pulled the book from behind my back. “Imposters abound,” I said. “Some foul miscreant might have stolen your likeness and taken your place.”
He snorted, his lips flapping at me. “Come then. Try me and you shall see.”
I read the title of the book. “A Treatise on the Darkened Age,” I said. Then I started reading from the middle of the book. “And it came about that in the fifth century that the kings and queens of earth agreed . . .”
“ . . . that whosoever possessed the gift of kings at the dawn of the next year would be granted rule,” Custos finished. He shuddered. “Horrible decision. Terrible bloodbath followed.”
I stared at him with my usual mixture of defeat and amazement. “How do you do that?”
He popped one of the surrendered dates into his mouth and winked at me, tapping his forehead. “I’ve told you—the library in here is just as you see it out there. Someday, perhaps, you will comprehend.”
I laughed my doubt at the idea. We were alone, but I whispered regardless. “Custos, someone is stealing gifts, but I don’t know why.”
He swallowed thickly, his throat cording with the effort. “The obvious reason why would be monetary gain, but you’re more than sharp enough to know that, so I’m going to assume you’ve seen something in the crime that means money’s not a motive.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. I wondered if he was hoping I might be gone when he opened them. “Iosa help us, you think there’s a noble involved.”
When he looked at me again, I nodded. “An old musician died last night.”
Custos nodded. “They told me, said it was a stroke. Ian Kells. I’ve already taken his name off the list of the gifted.”
“I’ve received confirmation that nobles are involved in his death,” I said. Then I thought about the fact that my confirmation came in the form of a ten-year-old boy whose mind shut down at the mere thought of his father. “Of sorts,” I added. “What can you tell me about Ian’s gift?”
Custos shrugged and pointed at the library. “You know my information is only as good as the store of facts contained within the library, extensive, but it doesn’t hold everything.”
I knew this from previous conversations but didn’t see how it applied here. “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering he led me to a room within the library fronted by locked double doors of heavy wood dark with age. “Let me show you the actual records.” He pulled out a key from somewhere inside the rumpled folds of his cassock, and we entered into broad space that looked no different than any other part of the library with the exception that there were more empty shelves there.
“We expand it every couple of centuries so that it will remain separate from the rest of the library. I imagine someday we’ll have to enlarge the cathedral. Ian’s record is over here.”
He stepped to a case and pulled a red leather-bound book from a shelf toward the bottom. “This is the musician’s case,” Custos said with a wave of his arm. “Every gifted musician in the northern continent is recorded here along with their lineage.”
Intrigued, I looked at the cases around the room, some much larger and holding more volumes than others. “There are more than six.”
Custos nodded, tucking the book under his arm. “Yes, when the church first began to catalog the lineage of the gifted, we grouped them that way: beauty, craft, sum, parts, helps, and devotion. But over time, as the gifts were split, it became difficult to keep track of the information that way and we began categorizing the gifts by their intersection with each person’s talent.” He essayed a lopsided smile. “I imagine sometime in the future, long after we’re dead, they’ll have to begin cataloging it by temperament as well. Fortunately, I won’t be around when that decision is made. Ugh, can you imagine all the writing?” He nodded to his right. “The musician’s case is one of the largest. It would seem Iosa wanted music for his people when he sent his spirit. Come, I will show you something startling.”
We walked around the long aisle, proceeding past the cases. I noticed the number of volumes decreasing and the size of each case shrinking until we came to a case that held two lonely volumes on its solitary shelves. Custos reached out, his motions slow and reverent, and pulled the newer one from the shelf.
We were alone, but a sense of awe filled me and I spoke my question in hushed tones. “What is it?”
Custos put it into my hands, the leather, old and worn, and the binding stiff with disuse. “The book of the gift of kings.” He shook his head in wonder. “You wouldn’t think so much horror and bloodshed could be captured in the truncated genealogies of those who have held it.”
I held the book as if it might turn into a viper at any moment and bite me. “I’ve heard people speak of it,” I said. “Why is it so rare?”
Custos laughed. “I remember this from your days as an acolyte. You always had a penchant for asking short questions with long answers.” He shrugged. “The gift of kings is the ability to administrate all the others. In that sense it takes a piece of the other gifts and combines them into something unique.” He lifted one hand, seeing my confusion. “It’s the same in any trade, really. The man who makes the best stone mason once hauled mortar and bricks. Each king or queen who carries the gift has an intimate knowledge of all the gifts in order to administrate and shepherd Aer’s people. And the gift has never been split. Something in the way Aer designed it won’t allow it. Every king or queen who’s tried to bestow it upon more than one child has failed. A few times the gift went free. After a while, people stopped trying.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of Laidir playing a musical instrument or dancing or crafting wonders fro
m copper and iron.”
Custos smiled. “The manner of Laidir’s gifting has brought something to the gift of kings few of his predecessors have—a sense of humility. Queen Ulrezia regularly plays the harp within her court, and across the mountains to the east, King Ellias spends his idle time fashioning art and armor in his own smithy.”
“The manner of his gifting?”
“It came to his ancestor as a free gift a little over two hundred years ago. The clergy nearly refused to coronate a commoner. The nobles threatened to rebel if they did, and the commoners threatened to revolt if they didn’t.”
What motivated a man? A priest’s answer didn’t vary much, whether they were from the Merum, Absold, Servants, or Vanguard orders. It didn’t matter what color robe the priest wore, the reply centered on some or all of three categories: sex, coin, and power. And the greatest of these was power.
“What was it you wanted to tell me about Ian’s gift?” I asked. I had an intuition about what was happening, but the theory scared me. I didn’t have the power to investigate a noble. Only the king’s castellan and his deputies could do that. Right now, I didn’t even have permission to investigate Ian’s death. I’d stepped off a porch into what appeared to be a puddle and fallen in over my head.
“His gift of beauty was as close to pure as we can determine,” Custos said. “Our records only go back to the third century, but as far as I can tell, it was never split.”
I tried to digest that. It would explain Ian’s success as Laidir’s court musician. The more a gift was split by a parent to two or more children the weaker it became. There were any number of people who were the recipient of a gift that had been split so often it conveyed almost no benefit whatsoever.
But pure? Since the war nine years prior I’d developed the habit of jumping to the worst conclusion, a habit that had kept me alive more than once. “Custos, where else are the records of the gifted kept?”
By Divine Right Page 3